SUSANNA

39| THE EXECUTION

12 DECEMBER 1669

The executioner tied her hands together and pulled her behind him.

She looked up at the sky. It was clear and bluer than it had ever been. A few clouds drifted across the heaven. The sound of seagulls on the east side of the bay was audible, and the fresh smell of the ocean caressed her face.

A coarse sack filled with huge stones was visible at the edge of the water. Provision had been made for her to stand in the centre of the stones.

"Get in," commanded the executioner.

Susanna stepped inside the sack, into the space reserved for her. Her dirty, bare feet hardly flinched when one of the stones, sharp and rough, shaved the skin from her toe. It began to bleed.

Behind her the voices of a few slaves filtered into her hazy consciousness. The slow, melancholy melody grew louder and louder. She tilted her shaven skull to the sounds of their harmonious voices. Slow and powerful the lyrics filled the atmosphere around the edge of Table Bay.

'You are no longer a slave,' she heard them sing in her mother tongue. 'Your daughter will never be a slave. Your son is our son. You are our warrior. Your story is our story. Your life is our life.'

She gasped and filled her lungs with the fresh, salty air. She positioned her feet and steadied herself. He tied her legs together with a thick rope, pulled the sack over her head and began to sew it up as the singing resounded in her ear.

'Your son is our son,' they sang as snippets of light filtered through the meshed fabric of the coarse sack as it began to mummify her arms and legs.

Her eyes focused and refocused. They widened and narrowed, clinging to the last view of her last light. They blocked out the darkness inside the sack, savouring the pin-sized dots of light that seeped through.

Her eyes searched for the familiar little figure of Andries amidst the slaves.

If their singing that accompanied her to her final resting place transcended the pain, the fear and numbness that had gripped her, no one knew. If tears in anticipation of her everlasting freedom flowed down her cheeks, no one saw them. If her legs trembled and shook nobody felt. If her heart as a mother bled and ripped her chest apart for Andries, nobody felt it, except Susanna.

Susanna from Bengal trembled among the stones destined to accompany her to her watery grave. They, the sack and the fear bore witness to her final moments of anguish.

"The sack sewn up," she heard the excutiioner say.

"You are no longer a slave," they sang. "My son is your son," her lips murmured.

"Move her closer to the edge," the executioner shouted. "You, you and you, help him." Hands heaved her mummified body forward. "Push her over!"

Still the voices continued in unison. "Your story is our story. Your life is our life."

The sack tumbled and hit the water of the bay. The onlookers gasped, and closed their eyes.

The melody of those standing on the fringes of the bay grew fainter, and fainter until it dissapated.

The water of the bay separated, opened, and let her in as her body hit the water with a splash.

"Your son is our son," it picked up, once more, as she sank further and further.

The water covered her head. The ocean closed its surface and guided her down to its quiet depths. Then she was gone. Erased from existence.

Nobody witnessed when her sputters subsided. Nobody felt her anguish as her lungs gasped for one last breath. Nobody witnessed the ocean make a space for her, only the fish and the stones and the sack.

She was at rest, free at last, on its bed.

***

When darkness fell on Table Bay, before Commander Borghorst retired to his bedroom, he concluded the very last task of his day. He pulled his journal close and dipped his feather into the pot of ink, once again. In his neat, upright handwriting he made one entry.

On the 13th day of December in the year of the Lord, 1669, at exactly 11 o'clock the sentence imposed on the one-ear convict slave, Susanna van Bengal, for the strangulation of her infant daughter, Elsje van de Caap. The six- month old slave was duly baptised and registered as property of the Dutch East Indian Company at the time of death which occurred on 11 December 1669. The sentence of drowning as imposed by the Council of Justice was read in the square in the presence of all Company slaves and the execution was carried in the presence of all the slaves of the Colony.