The White Lioness (1993) by Henning Mankell

Author:Henning Mankell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Henning Mankell
ISBN: 9780099464693
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1993-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jan Kleyn did have one weakness, one pure secret. Her name was Miranda, and she was as black as a raven's shadow. She was his secret, the vital counterpoint in his life. Everyone who knew Kleyn would have thought it inconceivable. His colleagues in the intelligence service would have dismissed as preposterous fantasy the suggestion that they had anything at all in common.

They were the same age, and had been aware of each other since they were children. But they lived in two different worlds. Miranda's mother, Matilda, was a servant in Kleyn's parents' house on a hill outside Bloemfontein. She lived in one of a cluster of tin shacks where the Africans had their homes a few kilometres away. At first light, she would make her laborious way up the steep hill to the white house, where her first task of the day was to prepare and then serve the family breakfast. There were servants whose job was to take care of his brothers and sisters. Even so, he would often turn to Matilda. One day, when he was eleven, he began to wonder where she came from every morning, and where she went back to. He was not allowed to leave the walled-in garden on his own, but one day he followed her in secret when her day's work was done. It was the first time he had seen at close quarters the clutter of shacks where African families lived. He knew that the blacks lived in quite different conditions from his own. He was forever hearing from his parents how it was part of the natural order of things. Even so, he had never imagined their houses would be as awful as those he now saw.

But there was also something else that attracted his attention. Matilda was met by a girl of his own age, lanky and thin. Perhaps Matilda's daughter. He realised for the first time that Matilda had a family, a life apart from the work she did in his home. It was a discovery that affected him badly. He could feel himself getting angry. It was as if Matilda had deceived him.

Two years later she died. Miranda had never explained to him how it happened, just that something had eaten away her insides until all life left her. Her family had broken up. Miranda's father took two sons and a daughter with him to where he came from, the barren country far away on the Lesotho border. Miranda would grow up with one of Matilda's sisters. But Jan's mother, in a gesture of unexpected generosity, took Miranda under her wing. She was to live with the master gardener, who had a cottage in a remote corner of their grounds. Miranda would be trained to take on her mother's work. In that way, the spirit of Matilda would live on inside the white house. Jan's mother was a Boer. For her, keeping up traditions was a guarantee for the continuation of the family and Afrikaner society.

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