Little Nathaniel watched his parents fight every day and watched his mother cry every time his father was done shouting and hitting her. But every single time she forced herself to stop crying, picked him up, rocked him, and sang sweet songs in their mother tongue to calm his scared little heart. He loved his mother, to him she was the strongest woman alive. His experience growing up in a distraught, dysfunctional home made his mind mature even faster than his body. He was a beautiful boy, his father’s genes were strong in him, and his mother’s strength coursed through his veins. Even though he spent nights crying he woke up every day vowing to one day make his mother smile again. To him, no woman could ever be like his mother.
To him, his mother could do no wrong which was why when he fell under the cruel hand of measles at age 7 he didn’t blame her when she turned to the streets to get the money needed for his treatment. If it was the first time Anja Schmidt had ever had to sell her body, he didn’t blame her, she did it for him. He saw her return to their room in the boarding house with new men every night but once he got his treatments she stopped and continued to take care of him. He slept with his hand over her heart to let her know he loved her and didn’t judge her actions. At age 9 he barely knew or saw his father anymore. The miners in the boarding house were his fathers. Olga was ailing after years spent in the humid kitchen of the boarding house.
It was at this time that Anja had to make the hard choice of sending him out to work. There was an opening at the orphanage, they were looking for someone to clean the rooms and serve the staff. It didn’t matter that he was not a native, he was hired simply because the Administrator, Isaiah Kopano, a short pudgy man, took pity on the young mother and her malnourished son and gave him the job. Nate worked hard, he was fluent in the language and his mother tongue. His sharp gray eyes missed nothing. The orphanage had a library with sparse books of places of the world. Since the orphans who lived there barely spent their time in the library, Nate retreated there every day after his work was done to read about the places of the world where they had cars, and regular electricity – unlike the fluctuating ones they managed in the Miners Village. He read about the Titanic, read about the wars that took place before he was born, and the booming economy of the Western world after the war. After 2 months of working in the orphanage, he made a friend, Tshepo, a boy of his age. He was a tall boy with the build of someone older. While the older boys went to work or the other smaller boys played Nate and Tshepo spent their time building their friendship and equal love for books.
By the time Nathaniel turned 15, he bloomed into a beautiful young man. It was impossible not to notice the tall, lanky, dark-haired boy with gray eyes greet shop owners as he ran past them to his work at the orphanage. They knew him as the son of Anja not only because she mended their clothes but because she was known to wait for the miners in the pubs, hoping one would take her home in exchange for money. Nate knew what his mother had to do to take care of them and he didn’t blame her. He blamed instead his useless father who only came home to ask for more money and hit his wife.
Gabore was no longer the small country it once was yet there was a class distinction among the people. This part where the boarding house was located became known as the Miner’s village, here was where the working class lived, men who still went to the fields to dig up what was remaining in the diamond mines.
Fredrick remained in the Miner’s Village. He was the richest man. Over the years the climate in Gabore shifted so that it was no longer dry and deserted. The marshland where Fredrick had first found the biggest diamond was now an island on a turbulent runoff of the ocean, feeding into channels that lead into the much larger sea. The rumors had it that diamonds laid free on the shores, and the tides of the water brought more diamonds and pearls adding more riches to his wealth. He hired workers by the day to pick the prized stones and cultivate the land. The island was highly secured and protected although to what extent no one knew.
Johann, appearing far older than his actual age now, lived on the streets of Gabore ending up in drunken heaps in the alleys of the town every night. Every once in a while he went back to the boarding house demanding money for more whiskey.
He finally ventured into the boarding house one day, staggering and wretched but with an air of excitement about him.
Anja looked at him with distaste, saddened by what the years did to him. Gone was the man who wooed her with love and promises of all the good things of the world, in his place was a bearded, hunched stranger. “Look what the years have done to you,” she said to him.
He hiccupped and belched. “It is what you and that cursed son of yours have done to me.”
“My son is not cursed!” she swallowed the fear in her throat. He was a damaged man, and telling him Nate wasn’t his own would destroy him even more. She couldn’t let him know that the man he worshipped so much, Fredrick, was the father of her son. After Johann abandoned her, her needs had led her to the streets and into Fredrick's arms for one night. Even Fredrick couldn’t know Nate was his, she feared he would take him away from her with his affluence and wealth.
Johann scoffed. “Where is he? He should be old enough to bring some morning into this house.”
“This house? This house is not our house, Johann. It is Olga’s, we have lived here for 16 years and benefited from her kindness. Wake up, Johann, take care of your family as you promised you would,” she cried.
Johann waved her aside. “Where is he? He’s the key to my success right now?”
“What?” Anja asked, apprehension tightening her chest at the feral look on Johann’s face. “How?”
He smiled, most of his teeth were almost gone as a result of many drunken fights. “Fredrick will finally help me and that son of yours is instrumental to my success.”
Fear tightened Anja’s chest. “You want to sell my son to Fredrick?!”
His silence was her confirmation.
She lurched herself on him. “You can’t! , Johann you can’t take my son away from me!”
He threw her off him violently. “Watch me!”