The Lost History of Stars Read online

  Cecelia had been a little trouper, only four, but doing as she was told, staying close to me. But when the Prinsloo children started wailing, she gave in and did not stop until the jerking of the oxcart forced her to hold on. We collapsed into our pile of belongings—except for Willem, who vomited over the side of the wagon. Embarrassed, he kept his back to us, but I could see the pumping motion of his head. Staring down a firing squad and then watching our home destroyed warranted a purge, I thought. Sapped of emotion, he collapsed in place and slept without stirring.

  I was ashamed that he had been the strong child. I was older; it should have been me standing up to the officer, defiant against a firing squad. Instead, I shook a doll at them. I did nothing but make them laugh and provide them with an amusing story to tell over supper.

  We had not eaten since breakfast, and Moeder apologized for having forgotten water. She asked a soldier where we were being taken and was told only “a place of concentration.”

  When she turned her back to the fire cloud above our house, I recognized her look, staring without focus. She was making a plan.

  “At least we’re together,” I said to her. She did not seem to hear. And we weren’t all together, anyway. What would happen to Bina now? What would happen to Tante Hannah, my aunt, and her nearby house? Surely they would burn her farm next.

  My stomach became unsettled with the rocking of the wagon, and I thought of our ancestors, the Dutch sailors accustomed to the motion of ships at sea. I studied my mother again. I knew she would soon tell us to be smart and calm; God would guide us.

  Our wagon merged in line toward the end of a caravan of perhaps a dozen others. The heat wilted Willem and Cecelia. I took off my white pinafore and spread it like a buck sail on the back corner of the wagon to shade them. I began to tell them a story, just something I made up to try to take their minds off what had happened, to distract them from the smell and the filth, the heat and the hunger. Moeder fed us biscuits. It took some effort to gnaw them soft before swallowing, and that made them seem more filling. It would tire our jaws if not fill our stomachs. I was soon so dry I could not go on with the story.

  By dusk, the soldiers outspanned and we were allowed off the carts. Many children, driven by thirst, ran to roadside puddles, fell on their bellies, and drank muddy standing water, even as their mothers shouted for them to stop. The soldiers handed out tins of bully beef as supper for the hundred or so women and children. We were allowed no fires to cook, as it might draw the attention of our scouts. The night was beautifully clear, and I pointed out my favorite constellations to Willem, who sat on his little stool as if he were displaced royalty on a portable throne.

  It would be four days in the open wagon before we reached the “place of concentration.” After climbing from the wagon each evening, I could turn in all directions and see a dozen pillars of smoke rising to join the stained clouds. But my eyes were gritty with dust, so that sometimes it looked not like smoke on the rise but like dark, punishing storms raining down with devilish accuracy on farmhouses and barns.

  More wagons joined our caravan each day. By the time we were off-loaded, some of the children who had drunk from the puddles were already sickened with a disease whose name I had never heard. And perhaps confused by the ordeal, I was certain I had seen an apparition in our new enclosure: a man who looked a great deal like Oom Sarel—my father’s brother.

  2

  September–October 1900, Concentration Camp

  A sprawling city of white bell tents spread in a grid across the valley, row by row, column by column—densely concentrated. We had eaten little on the trip and had such a small ration of water that my insides were like dry leather. My eyes stung from fatigue, but each time I closed them I saw the colorless outline of our house aflame. I had stared so hard that the image was etched onto the surface of my mind.

  The Tommies shouted at us to gather and make ourselves orderly for an officer’s remarks. We would soon see the rules of the camp posted everywhere, he told us, and it was his job to be certain we understood them from the start. He would read them in detail for the benefit of “the many illiterate” among us.

  Moeder remained straight and solid while Willem and I cleaved tight from opposite sides. Cecelia slept through it all in Moeder’s arms. The wagon had been so crowded, and I so reluctant to lie in the animal wastes, that I had held on to the back gate, standing much of the trip. When we were off-loaded, the ground continued to roll beneath me and I strained to keep from faltering.

  The officer cleared his throat and resumed shouting.

  “No letter shall be posted without being read and approved by camp censors,” he announced. He turned his head across the span of our group, but looking above us rather than at us. We had no idea where to write to our men, and no means of getting a letter to them. I would have no problems following that rule.

  No bad language was allowed, he said. My parents were more strict about that than any British officer might be, so I did not curse as it was, except in my mind, and I doubted the British could police that. I thought a damnation of the officer as a test. He did not respond, so I was safe. I committed to silently cursing them every day.

  No critical remarks were to be made against the British sovereign or government. I broke that one on the spot. Moeder gave me her “hush” look.

  No lanterns could be burned after 8:00 p.m. except in case of illness. I knew I would want to read and write at night but soon discovered that candles were too scarce to allow it.

  Tents were to be kept clean. My mother was already meticulous to the point of annoyance. She might work around the clock trying to sweep dirt off a dirt floor.

  And nothing could be hung on the wire or fences, he said. I was not sure why we would need to or why it was forbidden, and it was not a controversy in camp until I made it one.

  That first morning, they called us refugees, which I didn’t understand and came to despise once I did. Refugees, we were told, were not allowed to leave the tent after dark. I would break that rule often because I could not check on the stars in the daylight. They could force me to live inside these fences, I supposed, but they would struggle to keep me from studying the stars. I had promised my grandfather I would always do that when possible.

  I was used to rules; from as early as I could remember I’d followed the guideposts planted by Oupa Gideon and my parents and by the Bible we studied every night. I saw them all as commandments, and I respected them, mostly, because I respected those who made them. But those were our rules.

  The British neglected to provide rules regarding the ways in which many thousands in this camp were to live in an area roughly equivalent to the space we had used for planting oats on the farm. Oupa Gideon always said that no one should live within sight of his neighbor’s hearth smoke. But I would see the faces of more people on my first day in camp than I had in my entire life. More frightening to me was the idea that they were looking back at me, judging.

  The camp rules became meaningful to me in only one way. I discovered that these British guidelines were printed on one side of a sheet of paper. I had brought along my notebook for a journal, but those pages were limited and dear. The sheets of rules provided an almost inexhaustible supply of paper for anyone brazen enough to rip them off the posts at night, when no one could see.

  The British army may have created a vast empire, but my reading of the news led me to know that its leaders showed poor understanding of conducting a war in our vast country. So it should not have surprised me that camp organizers had not recognized the need to make a rule prohibiting the stealing of the rules.

  THE GALL OF THE British to call this a refugee camp, portraying themselves as humanitarians providing food and shelter to thousands of homeless, when they were responsible for our being homeless in the first place. I would not hide my contempt. Whenever I saw a guard, I twisted my face tight and shot him through with looks of scorn.

  They treated us like stock from the first moment, h
erding us into separate fenced kraals. Among those now imprisoned, we were called the Undesirables because our men were still on commando and refused to surrender. Some of the British called us Irreconcilables, which I preferred, as it sounded more defiant. I did not appreciate being considered undesirable, but I would proudly admit that I would never be reconciled to the British presence on our land.

  A fence inside the fences kept us from the Boers who were there under British protection. They went by different names, too. The Tame Boers were those who would not fight. The Hands-Uppers were those who had surrendered to the British. And the Joiners were the worst, being traitors who not only surrendered but agreed to help the British, in actual combat, or with scouting and spying. We considered them all traitors and decided that they were fortunate to be protected from us. If they did not fight against the British, they might as well be British, we believed. In exchange for selling their country to the devils, they received more and better rations in camp, and soap and candles and small things to make their lives easier.

  We heard talk of the British putting ground glass in the flour, or fishhooks in the bully beef. The meat was such gnarled gristle that we might not have noticed hidden glass or metal if it were in there. Meals were an unchanging series of mealie pap, canned beef, meal or samp, condensed milk. No vegetables. No fruit.

  The maggots were not large, but they glowed starry white against the leathery meat. My throat seized shut the first time I saw them. But as proved true with so many of the worst things, familiarity eased disgust. Bina used to talk of eating bugs and beetles, and she certainly did not appear to be underfed. It taught me how spoiled I had been at home, where the smell of Moeder’s cooking pulled at me like gravity. At first I surrendered myself to memories of the flavors and textures—the loins, the chops, the ham, the crunch of bacon, the saltiness of biltong—and each memory caused a different part of my mouth and mind and stomach to react. Every day felt like the brink of starvation until I realized how much I was punishing myself with the memories. Better not to think of those things. Eventually I relinquished the words for them.

  Our flour was flecked with black weevils, but they were not as obvious or bothersome as the maggots. I still did not enjoy coffee, since the smell reminded me of Oupa Gideon, which caused my chest to ache. Moeder sometimes made a sour look when tasting her coffee. But when she sipped from a rusty tin that previously held the processed meat, she gripped it in the same delicate fashion she did her china teacups at home, her grace undiminished.

  She coped without complaint, and seeing her strength, the rest of our family adapted. It was not the case with the family already occupying the tent. Having had the space to themselves for a month before we were billeted among them, the Huiseveldts treated us like intruders. We four cautious Venters joined the begrudging Huiseveldts in a space the size of a small bedroom at home. It was not as if we had chosen the tent of our own accord so that we could siphon off their luxuries.

  A quick friendship among the children added to the civility but contributed to the clamor. In so many ways, Klaas Huiseveldt and Willem were the same little boy, their slightly different bodies covering common internal devices. Every stick became a rifle, every stone was hurled, and every incidental contact an invitation to do battle as if to the death.

  They played fivestones and knucklebone and chased each other and hid between tent rows with no regard to the weather or the well-being of bystanders. Communication was limited in form: either a shout, a whisper behind a shielding hand, or a fistfight. Klaas was thicker and Willem taller, but they were equally committed to their apprenticeship for manhood. It was harmless in open spaces, but dangerous in a crowded tent. And when one boy took a scolding from his mother, the other looked on in knowing sympathy or slipped out of the tent for fear of getting winged in the crossfire of blame.

  The two mothers, trying to appear respectful of the other’s domain, would often target their own son for punishment just to send a message to the other boy. But we often sensed the tone that said: I wouldn’t have to correct my son if you corrected yours.

  On some days, Klaas and little Rachel Huiseveldt sat in when I schooled Cee-Cee and Willem. Their mother, Mevrou Huiseveldt, listened and offered sour criticisms or faulty corrections. While I was bothered by her ignorance, I most deeply resented her ignorance of her ignorance. The woman believed the world was flat. I could not even go into it with her.

  She had been so dramatic in her claims of being on the brink of perishing that I did not expect her to survive our first day in the tent. But she lived to complain anew the next morning. Rheumatism one day, indigestion the next, painful “blockages” on the third. She rendered foul winds that filled the tent and disgusted even the two young boys, who took pride in such matters.

  Often she would not move around the tent or venture outside for a whole day, and when she did, it was with a limp of one leg or the other or both, which caused her to stoop as she walked, making her look twice her age. Yet she was no older than Moeder. At times, though, she would disappear from the tent without a word, leaving her children unwatched for hours.

  Her head, she repeatedly warned us, “feels like it’s about to explode.” The third time she announced this, I began immediately dropping to the ground and covering my head. Once I was sure she recognized my act, I would peek out to see whether the danger of explosion had passed. She yelled at Klaas, hoping to chastise me by ricochet. Willem and Klaas caught on to the “explosion” response, and the three of us would fall as if we’d been shot. After a few times, she at least reworded that complaint.

  “My head feels . . . ,” she started, as the three of us eased toward the ground, “achy.”

  She was such a contrast to my mother, who greeted hardships with an appropriate scripture or a reminder that our sufferings were trivial when held against the sacrifices made by our men in defense of our independence. I expected as much from her. I had seen her suffer unspeakable pain. Moeder knew Mevrou Huiseveldt’s complaining wore on us all. Sometimes she would remind us—in polite tones directed at Mevrou Huiseveldt—to “think of the men, think what they’re going through.”

  “At least your Matthys is still alive and well,” Mevrou Huiseveldt jumped in, missing the point. “My Jan has been captured and sent to prison on an island . . . Saint Helena.”

  Meneer Huiseveldt was always “my Jan” to her.

  “Our men are still fighting,” Willem countered. He stressed the word “fighting” as a point of pride that our men had avoided being taken prisoner. Klaas tore into him, and they wrestled until Moeder pulled them apart.

  “But . . . but . . . Saint Helena,” Mevrou Huiseveldt said. “I don’t even know where that is.”

  “It’s an island in the South Atlantic more than a thousand miles from here,” I said. “It is so remote that the British used it as a place of exile for Emperor Napoleon of France, and he died there in 1821. After that, slave ships headed toward America were captured and taken to Saint Hel—”

  “Aletta . . . not now,” Moeder said.

  “But Ma, she said she didn’t know where it was. . . . I thought she might like to learn something . . . factual.”

  “Aletta!”

  “She brought it up . . .”

  Mevrou Huiseveldt began wailing, “My Jan . . . my Jan . . . a thousand miles from here.”

  “The Lord God shall wipe tears off all faces,” Moeder said, the words sympathetic but stern.

  “I wish they’d shoot me,” Mevrou Huiseveldt moaned. “It would hurt me less. And this food. They are trying to kill us all.”

  “Mathilda . . . please,” Moeder said.

  Indignant, Mevrou Huiseveldt pulled her children up on her cot and held them like a shield. They wriggled free from her grip. I didn’t blame them for wanting to be away from her. She was one reason I tried to escape the tent at every opportunity, and I think it was why Moeder so readily allowed it. She did not need the stress of my comments triggering more conflict.

/>   The woman’s crying—loud and dramatic—would start as soon as we all turned in. When the sobbing ceased, the snoring began. When she was not in the tent, Klaas amused us with his imitation of her thunderous snores. He shook the canvas of the tent flap as if it were a bellows powered by her fluttering exhalations. Willem skittered back and forth as if being sucked toward the sleeping woman and then blown back by wind. The real thing was less amusing at night.

  These early challenges of camp caused me to see that I was not quite the frightened weakling I had suspected. “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial,” my mother quoted almost every time she could sense I was readying to voice a complaint. As I developed the will to persevere, I lost an equal amount of tolerance for those who had not found that will. But the promise of God’s reward failed to subdue my disgust with a few things in camp. The latrines in particular.

  Almost five thousand people were now crammed into our camp, and they all used the latrines. But the pits had been neither redug nor moved. Each time I used them, I brought my scarf to my face and breathed through the filter of cloth, but it did little to mask the stench. At times the air was so thick with bluebottle flies you might breathe them in. They clustered in your ears, where their buzzing would madden. And they fought one another for places at the corners of your eyes, where they sucked for moisture. All the while they spread the filth upon which they had trod with their many thousand twitching feet.

  Bothersome, too, were those with no shame over their sounds . . . no better than barnyard animals. Perhaps it had been sapped from them over time, but I resented their absence of modesty and consideration. Yet I coped without comment, my stoic mother as inspiration. All adaptations required a balance, I learned. As I gained some control over my loathing of difficult circumstances, I grew less patient with difficult people.

  At times the little ones clustered like a litter of playful puppies. They would roll and shove, and I withdrew, preferring to sit alone, pressing against the sidewall of the tent to find my own space. Sometimes I was so sensitive to touch that the rub of my clothes felt like a burn. I grew tender, as if swollen beneath my skin. I wanted to shout or cry or slap someone, uncertain which from minute to minute. But as an adult, I felt obliged to be mature and stable. Still, sometimes as little as a sharp word would pierce me. I watched Moeder, strong as if wearing armor. But I so often felt transparent as gauze.