The covenant - James A. Michener [473]
But when Maud asked about sanitary conditions, the old woman did make certain concessions: 'We were farm families, far from towns. We didn't have privies like they say we must. We didn't have these new medicines. In the free veld we were never sick. In these tents, these dirty barracks, we die. Eight of us, and soon me.' She rocked back and forth, tears streaming from her eyes. 'That's why I say it was wrong from the beginning. It was all wrong.'
'Did you get enough to eat?' Maud asked.
Sybilla held out her arms for inspection. 'You don't get enough. You grow weak. So you get sick. Then, no matter how much you eat, it does no good.' She pointed to the field not far from her tent where women and children, driven mad by dysentery, were squatting and wrenching their insides. 'It's all wrong,' she said.
Desperately Maud wanted to keep this great woman alive, as a symbol of the fact that English women, at least, would do everything in their power to save a Boer woman, even though she was the wife of their country's principal aggravator. She failed.
In April 1902, when the imperial armies were at last closing in upon Paulus de Groot, pinning him against the barbed-wire fences but never catching him, Detlev woke early one morning to find his Tant Sybilla gasping. Since it was a clear autumn day, with the air somewhat fresher than usual, he knew the old woman was in distress, and he wanted to awaken Johanna, but his sister was deep in sleep, exhausted in the cool morning air, so he went to Sybilla's cot alone.
'Are you awake?'
'I hoped you'd come.' She turned her head weakly, and when he looked at her arms, thin as the reeds beside their lake, he realized that she was powerless to move. 'Fetch Johanna.'
'She's still asleep.'
'Let her rest.'
'Are you all right, Tannie?'
'I'm resting, too.'
'Shall I sit with you?'
'Oh, I would like that.' She lay quietly, his hand in hers. Then she showed renewed vitality and clutched him tighter. 'They say the war's almost over, Detlev. For you it's just beginning. Never forget these days. Never forget that it was the English who did these things. You must fight, fight.'
He wanted to say that he had no horse, but she continued: 'Detlev, you may never see the general again. Remember, he did not surrender. Even when they came at him from all sides . . .'
She seemed to fall asleep, then awakened with a start. 'Whether she's sleeping or not, I must speak to Johanna.' When he roused his sister, the old woman said brusquely, 'Now you go out and play.' He walked slowly from the tent, but there was no play. There were more than seventy young children in the camp that morning, but there was no play. They sat in the sun and breathed deeply, as if they had strength only for that.
On her deathbed Sybilla admonished Johanna: 'If I die before noon, tell no one. That way you can get my ration for today. And, Johanna, it's now up to you to see that Detlev survives. Women are stronger than men. You must keep him alive so he can carry on the fight. Even if you must starve yourself, keep him alive. Never surrender.'
This effort exhausted her, and she was near death, but suddenly her entire face became animated, not only her eyes. Clutching at Johanna, she gasped, 'And if they bring "hands-uppers" into this camp, kill them. Find long needles and kill them. In this camp heroes lived, not "hands-uppers." '
She was dead. Johanna called Detlev because she knew her brother loved this old woman, and he understood when she pledged him to secrecy. They sat all morning on her bed, talking to her, and got her ration, and when the attendants finally came to take her away, Detlev did not cry; many children in this camp never cried. But toward evening, when Johanna was apportioning the stolen ration, something happened that he would never forget: years later, generations later, he would remember that instant. Johanna broke the food into two equal pieces, weighed them in her two frail hands, then