This Life Read online

  It was after we had returned from the Karoo that these lessons in the dimly-lit voorhuis began, during Sofie’s first spring with us: the slate-grey land had regained some colour in the warmth of the sun, the dams in the marshlands glittered in the sunlight and the rocky ridges were fleetingly suffused with the brightness of flowers. The remoteness, the distance, the sunlight and the glittering of the water beckoned to us all day where we were busy inside the house, visible in fragments through the small windows set deep in the walls, and sometimes when Mother was not near to see it and forbid it, Sofie would call Jacomyn and pull me along by the hand, and then we would leave the books or the sewing and slip out into the sunshine of the day. Far off in the distance I can still see us in the wideness of that spring landscape, the two women, the glitter of the water behind them, and Sofie unbuttoning her bodice in the heat, laughing and breathless, and Jacomyn, her headscarf tied around the wild flowers we had picked, her dark hair gleaming in the sun. Sofie and I together at one end of the table in the voorhuis where I was busy with my writing exercises, the front door left ajar to let in the light and the brightness of the landscape outside, with Pieter facing us, sprawled lazily, elbows on the table, teasing, or trying to distract us, cutting a quill pen and passing it to Sofie across the table. The water glitters in the sun and for a moment my eyes, accustomed to the dark house, are dazzled. Never had I experienced a spring as beautiful as that one, I must admit here at the end of my life, that spring before Maans was born.

  Of the books Sofie and I read together like that, I understood very little at first, but Pieter borrowed them from her, and it was a secret between the three of us that had to be kept from Mother. She never caught him reading, for she would have taken the book from him and she might even have given him a thrashing, grown-up as he was, but she did know about it, just as she knew about everything else. “He’s lying about somewhere outside again, reading,” she exploded towards Father when some or other chore had been neglected or overlooked, and the words were also a reproach aimed at Sofie whom she never accused directly. “You must speak, husband, you must speak!” she cried out with her usual vehemence, but Father just smiled and stroked his beard defensively as was his habit. When the two boys got into an argument, Jakob sneered at Pieter’s book-learning and his preference for the women’s company, but Pieter only retreated into an unwonted silence and made no reply.

  Sofie and Pieter and I at the voorhuis table, Pieter’s blonde head bent over the quill pen he was carving for her; Pieter handing it across the table, and Sofie reaching out her hand to take it from him, while I glanced up from my seat beside her and noticed it: a gesture like so many others among people who live in the same house and share the same life, passing the knife, the bowl, the leather thong, the candle, and accepting it without a further thought. Why then do I remember the passing of the pen rather than that of knife or bowl, candlestick or thong? Outside the dams were blinding in the sun, for the fountains were running strongly after the winter’s snowfall and the pools were full; among the bulrushes and the reeds the water caught the light and the hollows were sodden. Sometimes Sofie and Jacomyn would disappear together and leave me alone inside the house with Mother and her silent but unmistakable disapproval, and only at dusk would they return. Or was there only that one occasion, that evening when they arrived home agitated and afraid after the candle had already been lit in the voorhuis? They had gone for a walk to pick flowers and some children had thrown stones at them – was that the way it happened? I must have been half-asleep by that time and I only remember the agitated voices; they must have stumbled on the shelter of one of our herdsman families in some remote part, and the children they came upon were unused to strangers, or took fright at the white woman, and threw stones at them. I remember how angry and upset Mother was and how furious Jakob became, while Father tried to soothe and appease. Were they raging at the children, or was it Sofie who had infuriated them with her irresponsible behaviour? I still remember Jakob’s dark face and how he struck the table with his fist and threatened to chase the people at Bastersfontein away once and for all so that they would never return; but is that really the way it happened, was it Bastersfontein he mentioned that evening in the candlelight, or are there other memories that have become entwined with what I recall of that evening? Was that the evening when the chair fell over and the door was slammed shut? Out of cobwebs and shadows my imagination weaves illusions in an attempt to find something I can understand. Dimly, dimly, across the years, through the dreams, through the drowsiness of the child who once heard it all through a haze of sleep I remember the clamour of the angry voices by candlelight, the chair, the door; I remember the thatched roof collapsed over the walls of the house and the dried-up fountain where no mud retained a print any more.

  How rich the Roggeveld always was for a few weeks after the end of winter, when the wild flowers appeared in the bright light and cold wind of the tentative spring, the only wealth that meagre land ever knew. I remember the spekbos radiant-white like a snowfall along the rocky ridges, large patches of yellow katstert, blazing like candles, and the fields of kraaitulpe like fire, the gous-blomme and botterblomme and perdeuintjies, and when the scattered clouds swept past the sun, the entire bright veld creased and furrowed like water, and the people moving across it were like swimmers on the surface of a dam, rolling on the waves of shadow and light. As the women approached, laughing, their hands filled with flowers, their feet were tangled in the shadows; Pieter stumbles as he runs towards us and for a moment he is carried forward by the surge, his golden hair gleaming in the sun. How did Pieter manage to extricate himself from his work and slip away to come with us? Laughing, he reaches out with his hands to break his fall, laughing, he struggles against the swell and for a moment remains afloat on the heaving surface where he is caught by the sunlight, and then the dark water washes over him and obscures him from my view. The women’s voices waft away on the wind so that I can no longer hear Sofie and Jacomyn calling my name; I start, and see Sofie standing before me, her dress flapping in the wind, and the flowers she has picked fall from the careless posy she holds out to me and are blown away by the wind. Impatiently she presses the flowers into my hand and turns around, turns away from me, and disappears into the tide of sliding, shifting shadows and light; laughing, she runs after Pieter, while Jacomyn remains standing beside me, following them with her eyes.

  It was during the spring after Sofie’s arrival, that spring and summer, I presume, because I am bewildered by the succession of bright days and I can no longer distinguish one from another; but that summer she was already pregnant with Maans and everything was different, not only because the birth of the child would determine the date of our usual departure for the Karoo or because Sofie was more often indisposed as her pregnancy progressed, but because of the high expectations the birth of Jakob’s son raised in Mother, so that Sofie was treated with a newfound attentiveness and consideration, and the pregnancy and approaching confinement were increasingly allowed to influence even the most important arrangements and routines of our daily lives. This was the child of the eldest son, the first grandchild and the future heir, and from the way Mother was preparing for his birth, I must conclude as I look back now that she had begun to amass his inheritance much earlier, even though the process was evident only occasionally, as with Bastersfontein and Kliprug.

  That summer Sofie was pregnant, and when I think of that summer my first memory is of Jakob and Pieter and Gert harvesting corn in our field, and of Pieter’s pale body as he stood on the wagon, laughing in the sunshine. By this time Sofie was walking with difficulty and had to lean on me over the uneven surface of the track; yes, now I remember how it was, and it becomes clear again how those memories fit together. Gert had come back home to fetch the wagon, and Sofie came running to where I was busy in the voorhuis. “Come, Sussie, let’s go along to the corn-field!” she whispered as if it were a secret that no one else should know, and we slipped out through the kitch
en and disappeared around the corner of the outside room quickly before anyone could see us from the house. We followed behind the wagon, trying to catch up with it, Sofie’s hand on my shoulder as she leaned on me heavily over the uneven rocky track across the veld; but though she moved with difficulty and was soon out of breath, she was laughing like a child, driven by an excitement which swept me along though I did not understand. Laughing and out of breath, we caught up with the wagon and climbed aboard, and so we reached the cornfield where Jakob and Pieter were harvesting together. To me it was just an adventure and it was only when we arrived there that I realised from Jakob’s outburst how much I did not understand yet. What was the reason for his anger? Sixty years later I still cannot understand it. Jakob had never shown any consideration, neither had he ever been particularly attentive to Sofie as far as I can remember; could it have been Mother’s disapproval and reprimand he feared, or did he in some way not quite clear even to himself sense that his authority as Sofie’s husband was at risk, did he already begin to sense he was losing her and she was slipping away from him in the golden haze of candle-light and dust, into the dark depths of the shadowy water? Jakob had always been a strange man with his silences and his outbursts, and who could say what was hidden behind them? To this day I struggle to find an explanation or an answer, so what can one expect from the child in the cornfield sixty years ago? Mystified, I knelt on the ground and watched them as they stood there, Jakob and Sofie and Pieter, in the summer sun in the field where the sheaves were stacked, and I realised they were grown-ups whose lives I did not understand: I remember the heat and the silence and Jakob’s fury, and how the tap of the water barrel beside me was dripping and had formed a moist, dark patch in the soil. I poured a little water into a bowl to drink and to splash on my burning face, and then Sofie sat down beside me on the ground and I poured her some water too, while the men began to stack the sheaves on the wagon, Jakob and Gert handing them to Pieter, who stood on the wagon, so that the load was stacked higher and higher until they had to throw the sheaves up to him with pitchforks.

  I knelt next to the water barrel and watched their shirts turn dark with perspiration, and Jakob’s muscles bunch together as he continued rhythmically and relentlessly in order to finish and reach home before sunset, as if his irrational passion and fury had been translated into labour, while the other two men strained to keep up without showing that they were tiring. And when the last sheaves had been thrown aloft, Pieter took off his shirt as he stood above them on the wagon and wiped his face with it, and I remember his lean, slender body and how he stood there on the stacked sheaves, laughing and taunting the other two, Pieter with his quick tongue and his banter, and Jakob with his relentless silence: how clearly I remember my two brothers as they stood there in the cornfield. And Sofie, where was she? I do not see her, I cannot remember her; I can only presume she was still sitting there beside me on the ground and, like me, was watching Pieter on the wagon and Jakob down below. All I remember is her voice reaching me, without being able to say where it came from. “Come, Sussie,” she said, “let’s go”, and when I looked up, she was already walking away from us across the veld, so that I had to run after her. As we were leaving, we heard Jakob call after us, and after a while Pieter also began to shout at us to come back and ride home on the wagon, but Sofie gave no sign of hearing them, neither did Jakob make any attempt to follow us. We walked straight across the veld in the direction of the house, while the men on the wagon had to follow the track, and arrived only after us, but it was a long way for us to walk, and over the last stretch Sofie began to lean more heavily on my shoulder again.

  Was I thrashed by Mother because I had disappeared from the house without permission? I do not know, because by that time I had learned to distance myself from Mother’s anger and her punishment. I do not remember whether anything more was said – the faces around the table and the angry voices could just as well have belonged to that evening as to any other; the chair falling over, the door being slammed – but it was our last excursion of that kind and Sofie’s last escape from the house, for very soon her condition became more of an impediment, confining her to the house increasingly. I know that she tried to occupy herself with sewing where she sat near the window in the voorhuis, but she had very little patience and she often pricked her fingers with the needle so that the item she was stitching was flecked with blood, and sooner or later she would let it fall, on to her lap or to the floor, and just sit staring through the window. Our lessons did not continue for long either, and later I would just sit down on the floor beside her with one of my books and try to read to myself as well as I could manage in the available light, my back resting against her chair: motionless she would sit there with her swollen body and her swollen feet and often she would cry to herself, tears streaming soundlessly down her cheeks. Why? Sofie at the window with Mother’s foot-stove under her feet, and Jakob leaning across the table, both hands resting on the tabletop, and the bitterness of their accusations and reproaches, so that Mother came from the kitchen to intercede – do I remember this, can I really remember it, did it really happen? Cobwebs, shadows, illusions; I shall never know, only that the separation and estrangement between them were real, however it may have been expressed, and that I knew about it and can still remember it to this day.

  The baby was expected early in winter and it was out of the question that Sofie could go down to the Karoo with us: it was thus decided that, for the time being, only the men would go with the sheep, and that Pieter would return with the wagon and a load of firewood and would take us, together with the household effects, as soon as Sofie felt up to the tiring journey. It was the first winter I ever spent in the Roggeveld and that alone is reason to make it stand out in my memory. The men had left, the herdsmen and their families had gone, and only us women were left behind at home, Sofie with her shawl wrapped around her in the voorhuis where the fire-pan now burned all day, Dulsie and Jacomyn in front of the fire in the kitchen, and Mother and I. Dulsie was disgruntled because she would have to endure part of the winter here, but otherwise we co-existed mostly in silence, and silently we moved past each other, briefly united only for evening prayers, where Sofie read aloud from the Bible and Mother strung familiar phrases together into a prayer. After a while Pieter came back from the Karoo with the wagon and he occupied himself around the house, chopping wood for the kitchen and tending the oxen, but there was very little for him to do, and actually we were all just waiting for the child to come so that we could join Father in the Karoo. As I remember it, Pieter was mostly inside, and he often sat with us in the voorhuis, listening as I read aloud, or talking to Sofie.

  How long did that waiting period last? I no longer know. I remember it as a lengthy, vacant, translucent time, cold and clear as glass, the violence of the wind against the locked doors and shutters, the sombre horizon with its leaden ridges and the low sky threatening snow, the intensifying cold, and the silence in which we waited. The night deepens, and only the tabletop and the small glass panes of the wall-cupboards deep in the twilight of the voorhuis still catch the light, until even these reflections grow dim and only the coals in the pan on the floor still glow in the dusk.

  On one of those bitter grey days, as I was helping Sofie to her room, I discovered she was holding, hidden in the palm of her hand, the wilted red bell-shaped flowers of a plakkie, though it was long past the flowering season. “Boetie gave them to me,” she answered distractedly when I asked her, and he must have come upon them somewhere in the veld on one of those occasions when he disappeared from the house without telling anyone where he was going and without anyone even bothering to ask. Had she always called him “Boetie”, for that was my name for my younger brother; or was it only because she was speaking to me?

  Sofie did not have an easy delivery: I know I was woken during the night by her screams and could not fall asleep again. Encapsuled in the dark of the room and the comforting warmth of feather mattress and skin-blankets,
I lay listening to the regular recurrence of those screams, and towards daybreak I finally dozed off again from sheer exhaustion. All of the next day the screaming in the front room continued, and I could not escape or evade it, for I had to stay inside, though none of the women had time to take any notice of me. Rigid with fear and confusion, I withdrew into a corner of the kitchen beside the hearth, not so much for the warmth as that it was simply the farthest I could escape from Sofie’s room and her screams. What had my life been thus far? Grim, austere, sparse, even, without much tenderness, not to mention love, yet only periodically and partially had I been alarmed by things I did not understand, and only on that single occasion in the fog on the mountain pass had I experienced fear or terror without being able to supply a reason for it. Without the friendly cloak of the mist to hide the abyss from me, I now stared down into the darkness and vaguely realised I would have to choose before it was too late, that I should turn around and turn away and find my own way along the steep, rocky precipice. Was there truly a choice, had there ever been a choice? Considering my life, one would scarcely think so; but still, without being able to explain what I mean, I want to say that if ever I had the privilege to choose, it was at that moment as I sat alone in the corner of the dark kitchen, determining my own future blindly and unwittingly.