This Life Page 3

  It was a lonely youth, though I was never aware of it myself, and furthermore I was the youngest child and only daughter. Between Jakob and Pieter, and again between Pieter and myself, there had been other children who had died, and only the inscriptions in the family Bible and the nameless stone mounds in the graveyard bore testimony to them, and only the three of us had survived. Jakob was the eldest son who always had to take responsibility and he was favoured slightly by Mother, as far as she ever showed any sign of favour or affection, so that there was a distance between him and me, regardless of that caused by the age difference and, besides, Jakob was a reserved and uncommunicative person. I was only a child when he died, and thus he remains scarcely more than a dark, silent figure on the fringe of my childhood world. “Blink Jakob” they called him, I remember now, and long after his death people who had known him sometimes still spoke of “Blink Jakob”. Contemptuously or admiringly, or perhaps both? I cannot say, neither do I know the origin of the nickname, but later they referred to him as a handsome man, and in her old age, on several occasions when Mother spoke of him to strangers, she also mentioned with a certain smugness that he had been a handsome man. Do I remember more, or is it only the memory of the nickname that conjures up further images: can I really remember something about a sleek horse, a gleaming black stallion I had feared as a child? That could have been the horse on which he used to ride through the kloof in the evenings, to Oom Wessel’s farm in the Karoo; or perhaps it is only my imagination. I was no more than a child when he died, ten or twelve years old.

  Oh yes, and that he had inherited Mother’s impetuous nature and her fierce temper, that I still remember. Could that be why people smiled to themselves at the thought of “Blink Jakob”? He would lose his temper in a flash and was a hard master to the farm-hands, so that he was not well-loved by any of them. Perhaps he took after Mother’s people, and that might have been why she was sometimes partial to him and understood him best.

  And Pieter – yes, Pieter was a different kind of person. Actually I never got to know Pieter much better than Jakob, for I lost both my brothers at an early age, when I was still a child, but between Pieter and me there was not such an age difference, and he had more time for his little sister than could be expected of an older brother. Sometimes he would make me little toys and even play with me when he was not being put to work on the farm. Pieter was more like Father’s people, smaller and slimmer than Jakob, with fair hair and blue eyes, and he was also more cheerful, had a quicker tongue and a livelier imagination, and was inclined to joke and tease: Pieter singing to himself while he worked, Pieter playing an old violin, or laughing on the dance floor in a haze of candlelight and fine, powdery dust. Why do I remember this now after all the years, why does that image present itself so unexpectedly? “Oh, but he could dance well!” Hesther Vlok, by then a middle-aged woman, once sighed, and it must have been her own memories that caused her to smile like that, for she was older than me and she might have been one of his dance partners. Pieter nimble and lean on the dance floor – it must have been at New Year, the dance I remember, when Sofie came to us as a bride and there was dancing. Pieter with his slim white body gripping the sheaves on the wagon, Pieter’s face at the window in the moonlight, Pieter’s face by the flickering light of a candle, Pieter running through the veld, laughing, running through fields of flowers in spring, stopping, his hair blowing in the wind. Later he never laughed or even smiled any more, irrevocably withdrawn in his silence, so that no one could still say what he was thinking or remembering.

  Jakob and Pieter and I, but what can I say about myself? When I was a child we had no mirror, and so I never knew what I looked like: a thin, shy, silent child I must have been, just as later I became a thin, shy, silent girl. We had all inherited Mother’s passionate nature and her temper, but while the boys never learned to control their tempers or hide their feelings, I was taught at an early age to keep quiet, to obey and to accept, and the feelings I was never allowed to express must have been buried inside and continued to simmer deep under the surface. A thin, shy child on a seat in the corner, hemming a cloth or knitting a stocking, that no one took any notice of and whose presence was soon forgotten, so that they said things in front of me that otherwise would probably have remained secret, or showed feelings they would probably have tried to conceal if they had realised I was there to observe them. Mother’s face, suddenly pale, Father’s trembling hands, the hatred flaming from Sofie’s eyes for a moment – all this I saw and more, more than they could ever guess, and I stowed much of it away, to rummage among accumulated splinters and fragments now, at the end of my life, trying to understand the meaning of it all. I bent my head over my work, however, and tried not to make any sound or movement to draw attention to my presence; I learned, one might say, to pretend and dissemble where I remained seated in the corner all the years of my life, the unnoticed girl, the unmarried daughter, the spinster aunt, always somewhere in a corner of someone else’s home or at the fringe of the company where she did not belong, at the fringe of other people’s lives in which she played no part, busy watching and listening, busy observing, busy remembering.

  So that was our family; but then there was also old Dulsie, whom I almost forgot, as one is inclined to forget about the servants, though she was with us for as long as I can remember. She came with Ouma from the Bokkeveld as a slave when Ouma got married, for her parents had given her the child as a wedding present, and years later when the slaves were freed, she stayed with us and helped to raise me. Dulsie always looked down on our other workers because she was the Ounooi’s own slave, as she said herself, and she slept in the house, in front of Ouma’s bed and later in front of the hearth in the kitchen, while they, the knegte and herdsmen, Hottentots and Basters, had to find a sleeping place in the outbuildings at night, or build shelters in the veld. She must have been quite old already when I got to know her; no, she must certainly have been old, because she had also helped raise Father, but, together with Mother, she still did most of the housework. Father always treated her with a certain respect, probably for Ouma’s sake; but Mother knew no respect, and when Father was not there Dulsie bore the brunt of her rage as much as anyone else.

  Ouma with the gilded china teacups and bowls, Ouma who had brought along her own slave from the Bokkeveld – the only other thing I can remember is that Dulsie often spoke to me about the Ounooi, and that there was a plaintive note in her voice when she mentioned the old days. Why had I never listened to what she told me? She described how she had to iron the pleats in the Ounooi’s caps with a goffering-iron and how fastidious the Ounooi always used to be about her caps. And one evening when we were sitting together at the hearth in the kitchen, she took from some hiding-place where she kept her possessions a small bundle and unfolded it for me by the glow of the fire, a worn silk apron, embroidered with flowers, that the Ounooi used to wear for smart occasions and had later given to her when she could no longer use it. Why did I wait until now to reflect on these things; why did I never ask Dulsie about Ouma? She would have been able to remember Father and Mother’s wedding and where Mother had come from, she would have overheard what Oupa and Ouma had discussed in private without noticing the presence of the slave girl, and she would have known about the tension that existed between Mother and Ouma without their realising she was aware of it; like the silent child in the corner she would have had the opportunity to observe, and she had no special loyalty to Mother to prevent her from talking. So much of what I want to know to help me understand I would have been able to find out from the servants. But now it is too late, for Dulsie is dead and lies under one of those unmarked stone mounds beyond the encircling wall of the graveyard, and Gert and Jacomyn also left and are probably long dead like her, far beyond my reach, with all the knowledge they possessed. All I can do, is try and remember their voices and listen across the years to what they can still tell me where they talk among themselves, by the kraal wall, in the yard or in front of the hearth
in the kitchen, without taking notice of the white child who is listening. I forgot about them; I forgot about their knowledge.

  So the servants were also there, in and around the house and in the yard, that constant presence to which I can hardly attach names or faces any more, only an occasional voice, or a few words from a half-forgotten conversation, a gibe or a curse, a song or a rhyme. Gert’s name and face I can still remember, of course, for, like Dulsie, he was always there: he was a Baster, or so he always called himself, and he came to us when he was a young child, so young that in later years he no longer even knew where he had come from or who his parents had been. They just found him, Father once remarked smilingly, and so he grew up around the house and on the outskirts of our family, slept somewhere in the outbuildings, received food to eat from our table and was clothed in Father and the boys’ castoffs. He was the boys’ playmate, for they were more or less the same age, but between Jakob and him there was always a barely concealed animosity. “Jakob has still not forgiven Gert for the thrashing he got that day at the fountain,” Pieter said one day when he was taunting Jakob, that I can remember; and how, another time, Gert grew pale and rigid with anger, a knife in his hand – “Just lay a hand on me, white man, then you know what will happen to you.” Was it the same occasion, and who was he talking to? To Jakob, my memory tells me, but I do not know where that certainty comes from, only that I was a frightened onlooker in the corner of the kraal – the smell of the kraal dung I can remember, and the rough stones against my back, and my fear.

  Dulsie in the house and Gert somewhere in the yard with the boys, working or fooling around, or playing – that is how I remember my childhood years. Jacomyn came only later, with Sofie, and then they left together and everything changed; but that was later. Of the herdsmen, however, I remember nothing. The men were in the veld with the sheep and built themselves shelters there, the women came to do our washing and smear our floors, and sometimes I played with the children, so that they stand out best in my memory though I cannot remember any one individual; barefoot children with ulcerous legs, in a skimpy dress or short trousers made of dressed skins or an old kaross. Later Mother did not want them near the house any longer, but later I myself had no further need of their company, later, when everything had changed; I only know that they were always around somewhere, behind the pear orchard or beyond the kraal wall, so that one accepted their constant presence without taking any further notice of them. The men were sometimes thrashed for being drunk or losing sheep, they were given notice or came to say they wanted to leave, and sometimes they simply disappeared during the night with their bundles, and only the black mark of their fireplace still showed where their shelters had stood.

  In my childhood years we possessed only two farms, the one in the Roggeveld and our winter quarters in the Karoo, but an effort was already under way to extend our boundaries, and I know there was constant conflict with neighbours about disputed land ownership or beacons that had reputedly been moved, and one of my earliest memories is how Jan Baster was chased from his dwelling-place near the boundary of our land. I never learned the details of this either, but I can remember an elderly coloured man at our door, hat in hand, trembling and stammering with dismay at the injustice he had come to complain to Father about; I must have been young still, for I know I had become upset too without realising why. Father stood on the threshhold, silently, with Mother close behind him, and I remember her giving him a little nudge in the back; “Tell the Hotnot to go away!” she hissed. How well I remember it, Mother’s black dress and her words and that small, impatient gesture with which she urged him on. At some time or other it was discovered or decided that the land on which Jan Baster lived was part of our farm and he was told to leave, while, from his point of view, he maintained the land had belonged to him and his people for many years and his father had lived there at the fountain before him; and then Jakob and Gert rode over one evening, or they were sent, and they burned down the few small buildings at the fountain. Jakob and Gert were enemies, but in the isolation that was our shared lifestyle, none of us could afford to surrender to our feelings of animosity or affection: Jakob and Gert struggling together to bring the ox under the yoke or to pry the rock loose with the crowbar where they were stacking the kraal wall, their heads close together; Jakob and Gert riding over to Bastersfontein together to set fire to the dry thatch of the hartbeeshuisies.

  How did I know this? It was probably mentioned at the dinner-table or it was eagerly discussed in the kitchen. Yes, and one evening, much later, old Dulsie snarled at Gert: “Jan Baster’s curse on you, both you and Jakob!” and Gert’s face clouded with anger in the dim firelight. “Old woman, just say another word …” His voice trails off in my ears, his face vanishes in the wavering shadow of the firelight, and I do not remember any more. But Jan Baster left, for what resistance could he offer after all, and where could he turn for help? And he and his family crossed the Groot River to Griqualand, I later heard the servants tell. Can I really remember it, that small procession with the rickety cart struggling down the road in the distance, drifting and bobbing over the waving shrubs of the veld with us watching them from the farm, and a voice telling me, “There go Jan Baster and his people”? After that our flocks were often sent to graze at Bastersfontein and our herdsmen erected their own dwellings there, and no one gave Jan Baster another thought, trembling with outrage before our door in his shabby suit of dressed skins. Who still knows today how the fountain got its name except me, lying awake here and suddenly remembering him? I never had an opinion or passed judgement, neither did the word injustice ever occur to me. There was just an old man in a suit made of skins, and a fountain where our flocks were sent to graze all the ensuing years.

  This must have been the way our land ownership expanded initially and our claim to it was secured, by disputes with the neighbours and threats or acts of violence against those who were weaker than us. Bastersfontein was the first acquisition I can remember and, after that, Kliprug; later there were the purchases and later still, when Maans was a young man, the inheritances, but it started off modestly, yet persistently, and when I reflect on it now, I realise that my early childhood was actually filled with the ongoing blurred arguments about the boundary fences and beacons of Kliprug, where Oom Barend Swanepoel’s herdsmen were reputedly trespassing on our land and had to be driven off forcefully by Jakob and Gert. And once more there is such a sudden, unpleasant recollection of violence, old Oom Swanepoel with his reddish beard, slamming down his fist on the big table in the voorhuis, Mother in her black dress, leaning across the table towards him, both hands resting on the tabletop, shouting at him shrilly, the way she shouted at the farm-hands in the kitchen, and Father sitting between them, helpless or powerless, not trying to intervene in their heated argument while Mother drove the old man from the house with her words as if she were wielding a sjambok. “I won’t be driven away from here like Jan Baster!” the old man shouted over his shoulder in parting, neither could they do it, for he was a white man and they could not simply burn down his house and evict his family, yet in the end he was forced to leave, how, I do not know. “Your grandfather drove to Worcester to get that piece of land,” old Oom Kasper Vlok told Maans at the wedding at Gunsfontein years later, “and I don’t suppose you’re sorry today, are you?” They were discussing Maans’s sheep that were grazing on the land that had been part of Kliprug in the old days, though nobody remembers the name today, and how good the grazing was there; I sat across the table from them and heard the old man’s words, and then I remembered the name Kliprug and suddenly old Oom Swanepoel appeared before me again. I know they conferred by candlelight, Father, Mother and Jakob, and that there were documents on the table that Meester had to come and read to them, so it must have been before Jakob’s wedding, when Meester was still with us. Perhaps they consulted an attorney or the magistrate, or Father might even have had his horse saddled and ridden all the way to Worcester as Oom Kasper had said, for the V
loks lived just beyond Kliprug in those days and he would probably have known. But however it may have been, the Swanepoels likewise disappeared, soundlessly and without repercussion they disappeared, and Kliprug was added to our land as if the disputed boundary fence had never existed.

  Mother in her black dress – at the time I did not think about what I had seen or heard, but as I watched her become prouder and more headstrong over the years, I realised how important land and property were to her, and what a high price she was prepared to pay for what she desired, acre by acre, morgen by morgen, and farm by farm. What fired this acquisitiveness that was daunted by nothing and no one, and saw all methods as legitimate? Perhaps that old insecurity and poverty, the bitter youth, the shabby wagon, the worn skin-blankets, the small handful of tin knives and spoons? Could it be that land meant more to her than merely a specific ridge or piece of shrubland or so many fountains, and grazing for so many sheep, and did she see it as a means to everything that had once seemed unattainably distant to her, the power and the status which she finally did achieve, the town house where she hosted visiting ministers, and the seat in the front row at church? I can only try to determine and recognise the pattern; with no hope of understanding it any more.