There was a commotion inside the grounds of the fort. Gunshots pierced the night.
When Susanna peered through the wooden slits she saw the silhouettes of soldiers, including those stationed outside her door, running in the direction of the fort's entrance. She crouched into her corner and cradled her head in her arms. There was a knock. She listened and waited. The door opened. The light of the moon accompanied the outline of a woman's body inside.
"Susanna?' It was Krotoa, her voice, barely a whisper with an undercurrent of urgency and fear, forced Susanna to rush to side."
"Krotoa?"
"Listen to me-"
"What is happening outside?" Susanna pushed her way past Krotoa but was held back. "Did Nommoa come for me?"
"Hush!" She put her hand across Susanna's mouth while she spoke. "He sent me. I cannot talk now but listen carefully. The Commander wants Nommoa dead and he plans to use you to lure him to the Fort. No matter what happens, deny that he means anything to you. If you see him, ignore him. Treat him like a stranger. You do not know him. Do you understand?" When Susanna nodded, she removed her hand from her mouth. "And I was never here tonight." With that she turned around and was gone.
After a while the commotion subsided and familiar noises resumed of the soldiers at their posts outside her shack. That was the last time she heard the name of Nommoa. Many Sundays had passed since Krotoa came to warn her. She lost count of exactly how many.
Nobody talked to her. She never saw anybody. Only their hands that shoved her daily ration into the opening at the door. Some days she stood close to the door for a glimpse of a the owner of those hands. But on most days the only survival tool at her disposal were her ears, two mental antennas that devised their own game of sanity preservation. Tuning in to the footsteps, voices, laughter and daily routine of those beyond her solitary capsule became an exercise aimed at mental strength and endurance against insanitary.
Since the night of Krotoa's warning the the numbers of the soldiers and their general routine around the grounds of the Fort changed. On most nights the Commander's protectors of the four bastioned walls were on high alert. The boots crunch with extra pace on the cobbles of rough grey stone. but her antennas could no longer pair the footsteps, the voices or the laughter as they moved back and forth, up and down they moved on their rounds right through the night.
They kept warm around the fires, told stories, argued, joked, complained and fought at times. They talked about the nights when they were off duty. How they spend most of their wages at the public inn on cheap arrack from the innkeeper's tap. And about the sweet delights of the women of the night at Barbara's whorehouse.
Before Krotoa's warning Coast was the face of her daily ration of water and beans and a cordial yet distant relationship developed between them. Susanna anticipated every twitch when she called her Coast instead of Maria. In the beginning her Thak you, Coast was met with a certain kind of passive-aggressive eye and face contortions which eventually settled into a quiet acceptance, anticipation even.
Then there were Angela and Catrijn who never disappointed with their mannerisms that bore all the trademarks of two slave women desperate to ingratiate themselves with those who had power. Susanna imagined that Angela always smiled when she spoke to her masters. Catrijn was loud. Outgoing. Jovial.
One day Catrijn came with Angela. Catrijn, the woman who barked orders with a voice that rumbled like thunder and a presence that cast a shadow larger than her physique. The washerwoman who she imagined found pleasure in measuring her water ration to the last drop stood at the opening of the door when Angela put down the water. The eyes of the one who made sure she would never have enough water to extract the stench of slavery from her skin feasted off her shame and indignity and watched as she battled to scrub the dirt from her flesh. The one responsible for her scarred body, her loneliness and filth stood at the opening of the door and stared upon her nakedness with disgust on her face, and without any trace of regret for the misery left in the wake of her malice. But then they were gone and she was alone again.
Loneliness had become a companion which made three months feel like three winters. It was an ever-present, overbearing, inopportune, uninvited, imposturous chameleon that vacillated between anger, rage, and hatred the one day and melancholy and sadness the next. It made her leap at the sound of a voice. Any voice. It was a most cruel partner at night for it brought with it a yearning for one single glance or the touch of any human. Even that of a soldier. But on a winter's morning, when the sky was a grey drizzle and the frost numbed her hands and feet, her thoughts recoiled and burnt with disdain for the same hand that shoved her daily sustenance into the narrow opening of the door.
I time her ears became an extra pair of eyes, and darkness and light became barometers of time: antennas that sifted through tone, the commands of officers and the voices of soldiers. They detected subservience; the sounds of locals bringing cattle; preparations ahead of guests from Batavia en route to Holland and vice versa; the arrival of ships; the celebration of good news, and the glumness of trouble.
Then there were Sundays. She knew when it was Sunday. Hymns began to sound familiar. Their Sunday mornings became her calender, her one-day crutch of hymns and hats and Bibles. On one day of the week she could reset her existence, orientate herself and search for meaning of a life among a Colony of strangers in a unknown country.
The night crawled with intrigue. Fear. Stories. Women's laughter. Orange flames ignited with soldiers' tales of heroism, and doused by sighs of despair. She could tell when the Commander was close.
'Before he was a Commander, he was a surgeon,' she heard the soldiers say.
If he was a surgeon, she knew him. She did not have to make his acquaintance, because she knew surgeons. Slaves came face to face with many surgeons. Above the decks of slave ships. At slave markets. Surgeons were gods of life and death. Below decks they were supreme beings endowed with eyes and knowledge that predicted the value of men and women, young and old, male and female. Babies too. A surgeon's eyes could detect any disease, hidden frailties, or impaired function. Internally and externally. One glance could sentence a captive to a lifetime of subservience, chains, hunger, bare feet and filth or toss another in an ocean teeming with sharks.
She no longer feared the eyes or the finger of a surgeon because fear had become a companion. Fear brought clarity for the day she, too, would take her final gasps. What would be her last memory? Will she have time for one last prayer when her life flashed by? Would she simply vanish as if she never existed?
She wished she had the power of the Colony's Commander who was once a surgeon. The first time she set eyes on him was the day she arrived with the Malacca from Batavia. The manner of speech was crude and consistent with the footsteps, dismissive hand gestures and fiery temper. His presence stilted conversations, changed the activities of the soldiers and infused a gloom among his men, servants and slaves.
Upon closer inspection the abacus of life and death was a short, balding man past his prime, with or without the feathered hat, cloak, breeches, and upturned boots.
But he had a treasure, leverage in his friendly war with the locals: a one-ear convict slave. The only woman that their revered warrior valued.
She might have passed a surgeon's test at the slave market in Bengal, and she might have survived the belly of a slave ship or a Batavian courtroom, but the love that burnt between Susanna and Nommoa had reached his ears. It gladdened his heart that his convict slave had aroused the desires of a Khoe warrior. She was the perfect bait.
The day the soldiers came for her began like any other day. She was hungry, dirty and alone with her thoughts as the sounds of yet another day unfolded outside.
The soldiers banged on the door, demanded that she stepped outside. When she felt the air on her skin she closed her eyes, and filled her lungs. The smell of the ocean, clean and fresh, lingered in her nostrils as the breeze caressed her skin. After walking a few steps, she fell to her knees and remained motionless, tears streaming down her face.
The two soldiers frowned upon her behaviour. Their gazes shifted from one another to the slave. One of them reacted. 'Get up,' he demanded. The tip of his musket poked her back and forced her back onto her feet.
The bony knees strained back up, steadying the thin legs that remained shaky and wobbly, unable to maintain her weight. She panted. Moisture glistened on her forehead. Overcome with dizziness and exertion under the sudden surge of light, she stopped and closed her eyes. She was in discomfort, pain, or distress but not a sound escaped from her lips.
If her skin revelled in the breath of wind that embraced her filthy arms and legs, her outward expression remained unreadable. And if the sun on her skin jogged a memory it remained hidden, tucked away from those who yanked the chains, and held the keys.
In the distance she could see Nommoa and Krotoa talking to the Commander. They were coming closer and closer. If she walked ten more steps, she would pass them. If the chains around her arms and legs felt cold and heavy around the legs that executed their journey towards the one person that mattered, it was undetectable. Five more steps. Two more.
Nommoa was so close she could reach out and touch him. Her skin broke out in goose bumps and the hair stood erect. She steadied her shaky legs and shuffled forward. Kishmia does not know Nommoa. Nommoa does not know Kishmia. Head down. Eyes on their boots. Kishmia is in Bengal. Susanna is in chains. Kishmia did not know Nommoa. She felt a whisp of wind on her face and she lifted her chin. Accept. Accept. What again? Nommoa is not freedom. Inhale. Kishmia is free. Exhale. Do not squirm like a rat on a slave ship in front of the master of life and death.
That is how she remembered the day the soldiers goaded her with their gun inside the shack. She remained on one spot. The lock clicked in place and she was shrouded in darkness, once again surrounded by silence. Her lungs refused to contract and expand. She rebelled for as long as she could to draw breath until the room started to spin and her legs began to shake. She dropped onto her knees as the stench assaulted her senses and forced itself into her nostrils. If that was a good or bad memory was not clear anymore. The only companions she had were sadness and a longing for her one true friend, death.
On the outside, a few metres from the pen where she was confined, there were voices. Laughter. Footsteps. Gunshots in the distance. But one sound drowned out all the rest. The thoughts in her head. The sight of Nommoa ignited splinters of memories. She cradled her head in both hands and hit her head a few times on her knees.
As time passed the night turned into an executioner, a cemetery of dreams. She peered through the slits in the beams and saw the black feet move with strain against the blackness of the night. She could not see the faces but she could hear the chains. Their legs were chained to one another as they filed into the fort at night. Their screams and prayers hurt her ears. Prayers and screams of foreign tongues that rose and fell. Rose and fell. Under the cover of darkness, the rhythmic interplay between pain, anguish and helplessness, and the flick of a whip-yielding wrist skilled in the art of torture ran its course. As night followed day the whip hit the spot with calculated precision. The whoosh of the whip. The rising crescendo for mercy was at its peak... 'Hell help! help he helllp.' It tapered off. Guttural moans.'No! n n noooo!' Groans of distress. Waiting. Praying. 'Help...help... help!' Crying. Anticipating when the whip will tear apart the black skin. Staccato pleas. Whoosh. 'Stop! St sto stop.' Silence.
Every lash that flecked the skin from their backs tore into the scars of her own. She cowered; hands clasped around her mutilated ear. Trembling, digging into the sand with her hands in the hope of finding refuge from outside. Curled into a bundle, arms clutching her head, too scared to breathe she went numb. Paralysed. Unaware of the hot fluid that trickled down her thighs and soaked into the dent in which she lay.