Page 26 - WTP Vol. XIII #1

Rangton van Bali: recorded and imagined
These his names as they appear in the records:
Ramtom van Matije Rantom
Rangton van Bali
Den Vrijswart [The Free Black] Rangton van Bali ~
This the place of his birth: Call it the village of Rang- doe, near the town of Mageng, somewhere on the forested slopes of Mount Batukau, on the island of Bali. The year is most likely 1673.
~
All his life warned of the sea, told that everything cursed and foul lives there, monsters and demons and misfortune. Keeping clear of it, even as a child, staying inland, walking the forest paths. Sometimes, straying too high, coming to a clearing or outcrop, looking at the water stretching before him, the way it thinned out into a flat line where it met the sky, and having
to shield his eyes from the glare of it, the horizon a sharp, thin stabbing light.
Sick now with the sea, sick with the motion around him, the stinking fear of three hundred other bodies, all of them being carried across the water, floating through this evil, this cursed and foul journey away from home.
~
Sold almost at once upon making land, then back into the darkness upon the water, for months this time. His ears learning the creaks and groans of the ship, the breaths of his neighbours, their silence and their weeping. Cockroaches crawling over him in the end- less night, consuming him, becoming his shifting, leaking skin. Reaching land, at last, unable to walk, his legs unwilling, having to be pulled along by others, stumbling forwards, no longer knowing who he is. What manner of evil has the sea made him?
At the Cape of Good Hope he is sold once more, with three of the men he has come to know in the dark hold. Men whose hands he has sometimes clutched,
learning their fingers, their wrists, their palms,
but never their faces. Squinting at them now in the harbour’s brightness, uncomfortable with their unexpected scars, their heights, their noses and eyes, none of them as he had imagined. Titus van Macassar, Jan van Kissen, and the one who has not spoken, who has said nothing of himself, his family, his home, and who stares out at this new land with blinking eyes that seem to be uncertain of what they are seeing. The man is Francis, just as he has become Rangton, a mangled form of his own name, but, like the others, he learns to answer when he is called.
~
Put to work as a carpenter and cabinetmaker after proving his skill. Word spreads and he is rented out by his owner, Elsevier, who is fiscal at the Cape and owns several properties in different districts. Though the fiscal is despised by many, is known to be cor- rupt, Rangton feels he is treated fairly, better than many he encounters. He is allowed to keep tips and sometimes a small portion of the payment for work he has done. There is also the daughter, Johanna, who is kind to him. She smiles at him, and once gives him a gift of a blanket after seeing him walking hunched into a winter morning, blowing on his hands. Never does he get used to the cold, always careful to make sure he has a proper blanket, a thick enough jacket, and after freedom, a sturdy pair of shoes.
There are curfews in place for slaves, who may not be outside after 10pm. Yet the evenings are his own, and if he is not too tired and the weather is fine, he will go alone, or sometimes with Francis, his silent companion, going up the scrubby slopes of the Table Mountain to set snares for hares or small deer. He makes sure to keep his back to the view, does not want to see the sea, though there is no avoiding it with the descent. No matter how he lowers his eyes, there is always that plain of blue widening out under his lids. He puts his hands on the stunted trees and bushes, their crooked boughs, finds in them nothing of home, but takes gnarled branches or stumps when he has the urge, sitting by the fire at night, carving them with patterns his father taught him, seeing them later in his dreams.
~
But his master is investigated at last, is found to be
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KAren Jennings