The Sunday Times Fiction Prize
Claire Robertson and Max du Preez discuss their books, both shortlisted for the 2014 Sunday Times Literary Awards, presented in association with Exclusive Books
VOGELZANG’S people were at the outdoors slave kitchen at noon when Calcoen came there in a train, he in coat and new wig, then a boy with books and paraplendia, then a boy with a table and one with a chair. The knecht came behind. Some of the party set up the table and laid out ink and pens and so on; the knecht pressed those there into a line and called us from the kitchen to take our place, and sent a boy for Doof Hendrik. Calcoen sat at the table, pen at the ready over his ledger.
The knecht took charge of the line; he held in his hand the lanyard of polished leather pieces that I had handled in Calcoen’s room.
Each person that came forward was made to show his right arm with the sleeve loosed and pushed up as far as the shoulder. While the knecht was employed with so arranging the shirt he told each one’s name to Calcoen and guessed his age and had from him his birth place if that were known. These the master of Vogelzang wrote in columns ready ruled on the page, I would see when it came to my turn.
The knecht next took the wrist of the person and held it so that the arm was in Calcoen’s view, and it must be kept thus while the knecht held discs against the skin to find a match, one for the outer side of the forearm and one for the inside arm higher up, that being hid from the sun in the usual course and paler. He would try several discs until Calcoen judged the correct one had been come upon and then, at a grunt from Calcoen, the knecht read off the numeral cut into the leather, only he gave the numbers as “vee one” or “one ex” as they came, for he was truly ignorant. These Calcoen noted under columns headed with little drawn pictures — a sun for the forearm, a sickle moon for the upper.
We were some thirty in the line and the going slow. We preferred it to work we told each other, though uneasily, for there never was a new plan from a master that did not cost us in some way. I was in the line behind Derde Susann, who balked at the knecht’s pulling her chemise to expose the swinging purse of flesh on her arm but allowed herself only a hissed curse. Then it was my turn. I moved with haste to pull back my sleeve to give him no reason to lay a hand on me but he made to fuss with the cloth, rolling it back with care and with every turn pressing his plump knuckles to my breast. He groaned in his throat, looking into my eyes the while, until I lowered mine in shame. When they were done with me he made to roll the sleeve down my arm but I pulled away, and stumbled against Calcoen’s table.
I could hear the knecht snigger behind me as I ran to escape his sight, around the back of the workshop. There I turned my face to the wall, my arms held tight across my bosom, pressing into myself to remove the memory of his fist at my breast. I thought, I will find a stone and bite down on it and with my splintered teeth I will shred the skin from his face, and I rolled the curse in my mouth to get every taste of it, the more because that was the closest it would get to being.