The Camp Whore. Francois Smith

the firing squad could be his fate. Rat-a-tat-tat. Not something that’ll happen if you incorrectly diagnose foot rot, right? So, chin up and smile, you’re at the forefront of military medical science.” Iron restraint? That is what she thinks about as she walks down the hallway next to Anne. Susan notices that she takes long, easy strides, and for a while she enjoys walking in step with her; a sort of military camaraderie in their synchronised paces, a bravado even, but then it seems silly to Susan and she consciously changes her stride. Still, there was something in this fleeting, inconsequential experience that has left her with a tingling sensation, and then she dares, also because Anne’s spirited irreverence has made it possible, she dares to give up some of that alleged restraint. “Do they also shoot those with venereal diseases?” she asks.

      “What?” Anne barks melodramatically, but still without the trace of a smile. “Perhaps where you come from, but here we’re civilised.”

      It jolts through Susan. Where she comes from? Yes! That’s in fact what she has in mind, Susan realises. For a while now, that’s what she’s wanted to say. While Anne was speaking, heaven knows for how long, an old image came to mind, it was in her head, here, in the passage, and back there, in the kitchen, and it was something that Anne had said that gave rise to this thing, this image from her youth. It was in Cape Town, yes, that’s where she’d seen it, it was one of the English soldiers, a captain, who had brazenly walked down Adderley Street with a prostitute on each arm, utterly at ease, as if he … as if he … but it’s not that either, no, not that, it’s actually just the simple fact that she’d lived in Cape Town for a while and that, practically speaking, she hailed from there. For some or other reason she did not tell Hurst, did not want to tell him, but now in this hospital hallway, and to a woman she has known for barely more than five minutes, here she wants to say where she comes from. “In Cape Town, once …” she begins, then holds her breath.

      “Cape Town? Have you been there?” Anne enquires above the click-clack of her shoes.

      Susan slowly exhales. “That’s where I actually come from,” she says. “Before the Netherlands. That is where I grew up.”

      Goodness, that was easy, she thought. Why, then, was it so difficult for me before? No, probably not difficult, but still, with Hurst it was an issue, a kind of obstacle, and this thing about her origin is what gave the conversation with Hurst an underlying awkwardness, like an unwanted touch, like fingers that … she shudders, shakes her head to banish the thought.

      Only then does Susan realise that Anne has come to a halt, and that she’s walked five steps or so ahead without her. She stops immediately and turns around to her colleague, and it strikes her that Anne has the ideal face for this era and this place, for this war, with those purple-haloed eyes and that steely mouth. “Then you’re a woman who has come a long way,” Anne says. “You can tell me more than I can tell you.” She starts walking again, this time with a gaze firmly fixed on Susan.

      Chapter 8

      Lebitso la ka ke Ntauleng.

      I have spoken! I have told Mamello what my name is. Ntauleng. I can speak again! And she clapped her hands in gratitude and bent down and laughed and cried lilililili and quickly ran down the hill to call Tiisetso. He came and stood in the cave with his knobkerrie held high and said: Kêna ka kgotso, Ntauleng. Come inside in peace, Ntauleng. I think he means that I should come inside from wherever I have been. Mamello starts fussing with the calabash, but Tiisetso just stands there staring at me, the handle of his knobkerrie held next to his ear. Perhaps he knows about the nights, how I lie awake in the dark, strangled by fear and struggling to breathe, and that I am always listening, to every little sound. Sometimes I hear a horse’s teeth against a bit, or a stamping hoof, then something wing-like passes over me, or a crowd of women with black dresses and big black hoods walk slowly through the veld and the dresses touch one other with a scraping sound, and from their bodies comes the smell of dassie droppings, the excrement fermenting in crevices, and from the corners of the women’s mouths bitterness drips down the jagged rock.

      They started singing, Tiisetso with a high voice for a man, and Mamello’s also high, but flatter, as smooth and flat as the rock where they slaughter. And while they sang, I said the words that came into my head, just because I could speak again, I said them. Just because I could speak again.

      Whore! I’d said. Whore! And again: Whore! I heard myself say it, the word just came out. It’s actually the only word that came out. The two black people sang, stood next to each other and sang with their bodies swaying to and fro as if they were being tugged by the wind, and I lay there and it felt as if I were being bled dry like a sheep with a slit throat.

      Now I know where the word comes from. The man who caught me like a sheep between the tents and pulled me by my leg to the place of slaughter while I kicked and kicked and kicked. He said it. He said it to me. That is what I am. Look, I throw her down onto the bed, and those who fornicate with her – look, I am the one who inspects kidneys and hearts, who sticks my hand into innards and rips them from the carcass – cast her into the outer darkness, feed her to the dogs whose jaws work lewdly throughout the night.

      The blacks sing, but it is of no help, it takes nothing away. They can do with me what they wish. I am worthless.

      The Lord will spit me out of his mouth. Whore is my name! And from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun that shineth in her strength, as the sun that shineth in her strength.