The Other Side of Silence by André Brink Read Free Book Online Page A

bad that it is not enough for
Frau Agathe to punish them, they have to be taken all the way up
the street, both still bare as small skinned fruit, to the
parsonage to be dealt with. That is where Pastor Ulrich awaits
them, enormously round and fat, his moon-shaped red face beaded
with sweat, the front of his black waistcoat stained by the past
week’s meals – egg yolk and cabbage and beetroot and meat and gravy
– his large soft hands resting on his stomach. In his high-pitched
voice he tells them that their nakedness is evil, a sin never-ever
to be forgiven. In future he will summon Hanna every Sunday after
church for an account of her sins during the week, and every week
he will insist on finding out for himself – he can feel with his
fat hand – if she has sinned again. And he will pinch her there,
viciously squeezing the little lips together until they’re bruised
and sometimes blood-blistered. The sound of his voice, like the
sounds of the great bell and of the oxen bellowing at the abattoir
to which they’re driven right past the orphanage in the
Hutfilterstrasse, all those sounds shrink and grow very small in
order to hide away. The same happens with good sounds. Like the
sounds on midwinter day when everyone goes out in their brightest
clothes, except for the orphan girls who wear grey, to skate on the
frozen Weser. Everyone, even the very old who can no longer walk by
themselves, but who can somehow still skate if they’re put down on
the ice upright, every single person in the town is there; there is
such a crowd, Hanna is convinced that even those who have been dead
for years must have come out to join them; and the noise they make
mingles into one huge sound like the blast of the trombone in the
brass band that plays on the Rathausplatz on holidays, and then it
grows smaller and smaller until it can fit into that secret space
of the shell she brings home from the grey pebbly beach of the
Weser that day.
    It is given to her by a small stranger she meets in the bright
shallow water. Her name, she says without being asked, is Susan.
She comes all the way from an island called Ireland and does not
speak German very well (she has come here with her father, she
explains, who is employed at the harbour with a lot of other
foreign Catholic people from Thuringia and Bohemia and other places
where there is no work for the men). Hanna asks to see the shell,
and the little girl hands it to her with an endearing mixture of
shyness and eagerness. It is beautiful, whispers Hanna, almost too
beautiful to believe. Hold it to your ear, Susan tells her, you
will hear the sea. Hanna has never heard of a thing like that, but
the little girl nods solemnly and insists, Just listen. And she
does and indeed, she hears the distant sea which hisses very softly
in her ear, and brings to her all the lost sounds of the world,
even from the far side of the earth where the palm trees are and
the wind is born, and the singing of the sun, for oh the sun does
sing. They play together for the rest of the day, Hanna and the
little girl Susan with her very blue eyes and her very black hair,
and it is as if the day itself, all of it, can now fit into a shell
which will never stop its faint, small, perfect sound.
    When she needs to pee and wants to run off, Susan says, Don’t be
silly, just squat down here, I’ll keep watch so no one comes, and
afterwards I shall too. So they first make a small round hollow in
the sand and she squats carefully over it, her feet wide apart and
her dress hitched up high so that it won’t get wet, and when she
stands up again to correct her clothes, Susan peers at her stomach
with large surprised eyes, and asks, What is this? And puts a
cautious finger on Hanna’s protruding navel. It’s my belly-button
of course, says Hanna, don’t you have one then? And Susan pulls up
her little red dress to take her turn to pee, displaying a sweet
and perfectly indented navel. (There is a small mole a little way
below it,