Tell Freedom

Tell Freedom Memories of Africa by Peter Abrahams Alfred A. Knopf New York . 1954 Acknowledgment is hereby made for permission to reprint selections from: // We Must Die by Claude McKay, published by Bookman As- sociates, New York; "From the Dark Tower" from Copper Sun by Countee Cullen, copyright 1927 by Harper & Brothers, used by permission of the publisher; "White Shadows*' (the entire poem) by Langston Hughes, used by permission of the author; "Song of the Son" from Cane by Jean Toomer, published by Liveright Publishing Corporation, copyright renewed 1950 by Jean Toomer, used by permission of the publisher "What I Expected" from Poems 1934 by Stephen L. C. card Spender, copyright 1934 by Modern Library, catalog Inc., used by permission of Random House, Inc. number: 54-5266 THIS IS A BOBZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. i Copyright 1954 by Peter Abrahams. All rights FIRST AMERICAN reserved. No part of this book may be repro- EDITION duced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manu- factured in the United States of America. For MY MOTHER, MY SISTER, & ZENA and all those others who, In their different ways, asked me to tell this And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. IsAIAH BOOK ONE ONE CHAPTER I pushed my nose and lips against the pane and tried to lick a raindrop sliding down on the other side. As it slid past my eyes, I saw the many colours in the raindrop. It must be warm in there. Warm and dry. And perhaps the sun would be shining in there. The green must be the trees and the grass; and the brightness, the sun. ... I was inside the raindrop, away from the misery of the cold damp room. I was in a place of warmth and sunshine, inside my raindrop world. "Lee." The sound jerked me out of my raindrop world. I was at the window, looking out, feeling damp. "Lee." I sensed that that was the sound by which I was identi- fied. I turned and looked at the man who had made it. He was tall, thin, and dark. He had a big head, wide forehead, and long face that tapered down to a narrow chin. His eyes were big, round, and hooded. There was a softness in them. He leaned back in a chair, his legs stretched in front of him, the right crossed over the left. He held his right hand out to the fire in the centre of the room. With his left he played with the hair of a girl who sat on the floor beside his chair, I knew that man. Although I seemed to be seeing him for the first time, he was no stranger to me. He belonged most naturally and intimately to me and my world. The man said: "Come, Lee. Tell us what you see and we'll make it into a story." The way he looked at me disturbed me. I felt tense and this unsure of desperate suddenly. I was unsure of man, what he wanted from me. I turned my eyes from his face. It was then that I saw the woman on the other side of the fire. The word "Mother" leaped to my mind. I burst out crying and ran to her. I knew her. She was Mother. She belonged to me. With her I had no doubts, no uncertainties. With her arms everything was always all right. She folded her about till I me and held me tight. She whispered words of comfort stopped crying. Leaning on her knees, I turned to the man again. And then I knew that he was my father. He was almost as safe as she was. Mother and Father go together. ... I knew that instinctively. It was silly to have cried. I looked at the children on the floor. There were a boy sisters. These and two girls. These were my brother and were my people, and I was seeing them for the first time in a way that I could remember for the rest of my life. What went before I know only from hearsay. A little of what came after has slipped back into the shadows. I can build what went before out of hearsay and after- knowledge. My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. "Coloured" is the South African word for the half- caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white. The first children of Europe who reached the Cape of Storms were men without women. They set up a half-way house to the East there. There was inter- course between white men and black women. The results were neither white nor black. So the Cape Coloureds began. Later, when white women came to the Cape, the white men were more discreet in their taking. But the Coloured community continued to grow. During the days of slavery politi- cal prisoners from the Dutch East Indies were brought into the country. They too, went into the racial melting-pot. In time the Coloureds emerged as a distinctive community. My father came from Ethiopia. He was the son of land* owners and slave-owners. He had seen much of Europe before he came to South Africa. In after years, when my mother talked about him, she told wonderful stories of his adventures in strange parts of the world. I recall a time when she made me recite, like a catechism, my father's family tree. It went something like this: "I am Peter Henry Abrahams Deras, son of James Henry Abra- hams Deras,, whose name at home was Karim Abdul, son of Ingedi(e) of Addis, who was the son of somebody else who fought in some battle who was the son of somebody else, who was the son of somebody else who was with Menelik when he defeated the Italians. ." It went on for a very long time. And the "Deras" or "de Has" was the family title. mother of a a of My was the widow Cape Malay ( product the East Indies strain of the Coloured community) who had died the previous year and left her with two children. She was alone except for an elder sister, Margaret. My mother and her two children were living with her sister, Margaret, when she met the man from Ethiopia. Margaret was the fairer of the two sisters, fair enough to "pass." Her husband was a Scot. He worked on the mines. They had a little girl with -blond hair and blue eyes. They lived in Nineteenth Street, Vrededorp. And there, in the street, the two brown children, my brother and sister, played with their cousin, the little white girl with blond hair and blue eyes. To this street and this house came the Ethiopian. There he wooed my mother. There he won her. They married from that house. They found a house of their own farther down the street. They made of it a home of love and laughter. From there they sent their boy and girl to the Coloured School above Vrededorp. From there the Ethiopian went to work on the mines each morning. To that house he re- turned at the end of each day. In that house my younger sister, the third child in the family, was born. And there, early on the morning of March 19, 1919, 1 was born. It was there, in that house, one rainy day, that a voice said: "Lee." And I turned from the raindrop world and saw my family: my mother and my father, big brother Harry, big sister Margaret, and not-so-big sister Natalie; that was the beginning of awareness. I do not know exactly how old I was. Three, perhaps, or four; or perhaps a little older. There are sharp, clear-cut flashes of memory. I found a stray kitten in the street one day. It had hardly any fur on its body, which was dotted with sores. Thick yel- low matter oozed from its eyes. Its left front paw was cut and bleeding. I picked it up and took it home. Only my mother and Natalie were at home. The other two children were at school; my father was at work. I went through the muddy lane to our back door. "Look, Ma!" Natalie cried. My mother turned from her washing. "What have you got, Lee?" A name for the kitten flashed into my mind. "It is Moe, Ma." He made a sound like that. "Well, get him out of here at once!" I stood at the door. "No. He's mine!" my ground , My mother came nearer and looked at the kitten. She shook her head. "Where did you find him?" "The street." "Well, take him back there." "No." "You can't keep him." "No." "Go, on, put him in the street and come back so that I can wash you. The thing may give you some disease." "No." "I said go, Lee!" That was the voice of authority. I began to whimper. I held the kitten tight. Nobody was going to part me from Moe. He was, quite suddenly, the most important thing in my world. Half-fearful, half-defiant, I screamed: "I won't! I won't! I won't!" That was the beginning of a battle that lasted, intermit- flared in tently, throughout the long day.

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