This Life Read online

  And Pieter? Men do not cope well with reality, and Pieter least of all: it was always Jakob or Gert who slaughtered for us and Jakob who took the lead when the men went hunting for red jackal or wild cat, and that day Pieter fled the house and did not come back inside in spite of the bitter cold but, wrapped in a jackal-skin kaross, he paced up and down in the distance, far enough so that he could no longer hear Sofie screaming. At twilight her screams at last became fainter, intermingled with feeble squawks and the voices of the women attending the birth, and Mother entered the kitchen to fetch a candle, and told me that Sofie had a boy. In the pale grey twilight of the winter evening I ran out to tell Pieter so that he could come inside and I remember the razor-sharp cold on my face and the swirling silver snow in the air, the fine white shimmer of snow on Pieter’s hair and on the jackal-skin around his shoulders as he came inside to the candlelight and the fire.

  Thus Jakob had a son, that squawking little creature in the crib beside Sofie’s bed. That winter in the Karoo he was christened Hermanus after his grandfather, and he was called Maans; but he would be the only grandchild, and there was never any heir other than he.

  After the confinement Sofie was eager to get to the Karoo, and Mother, too, probably wanted to escape from the Roggeveld as soon as possible before winter really set in and we were snowed in. Thus, as soon as it became possible for Sofie to travel, Pieter took us down in the wagon, with Sofie and her baby cocooned in down quilts and pillows as we jolted from one rocky ledge to the next, along the edge of the cliff.

  Nearly every year of my youth and most years afterwards I travelled to the Karoo with my family in that way, at first down the slopes of Vloksberg Pass, and later, when the road had been built, by way of Verlatekloof, initially with Maans as a newborn baby in Jacomyn’s arms, and later with the little boy running behind the wagon, or as a young man, helping to herd the sheep, or as an adult, taking responsibility for the trek himself. Why then do I remember this particular trek as the last one, while in truth it was one of the earliest in a long sequence through my entire life? Down the pass with Pieter and Sofie and her baby, over rocks wet with rain, fine, blustering hail lashing our faces, to the Karoo where birds twitter in the winter sunshine and streams surge down cliffs and crevices, heralding the rains that have fallen on the heights above, where waterfalls cascade from one ledge to the next and the day is filled with the rushing of water and the grinding and milling of the pebbles in its course.

  It was late afternoon when the small trek arrived at our winter quarters in the Karoo, and I jumped from the wagon as it halted and saw Jakob walking slowly towards us through the veld, rhythmically beating his horsewhip against his leg. Pieter lifted Sofie from the wagon in his arms, while Jacomyn followed with the child, but Jakob did not approach to greet his wife or to look at his child, and we remained waiting beside the wagon as if we had arrived among strangers where the reception was uncertain and the welcome dubious. Where could Mother, who had come with us, have been and why was Father not there to welcome us? I remember the Karoo scent of herbs and bushes and grass, the twittering of the birds, and the rumble of milling rocks churned up by the floodwaters. What was the nature of the change that had taken place, so that nothing was the same after this? According to what pattern, or rules, the memory decides what to retain and what to discard, I cannot say: I remember Jacomyn climbing down from the wagon on our arrival in the Karoo with the baby on her arm, the way she ducked her head with the gleaming black hair from which the scarf had slipped from under the tented hood and with one hand lifted her dress before her feet; after all the years I still remember that insignificant, incidental gesture and I see clearly before my eyes a woman who is long dead, but what I want to know now remains hidden from me, and I can only feel around in the darkness of the past for the splinters that may help me restore the pattern.

  The last trek to the Karoo I called it, even though forty or fifty others followed in years to come, and so it was, for that winter something ended, and on our return to the Roggeveld in spring everything was different. Sofie spent only two springtimes with us, the spring after her wedding and the one when Maans was a baby, but in my memory they have remained distinct, though it would be difficult for me to describe the difference between them. That she had new responsibilities and duties was not the reason, for I do not believe she took much notice of the child, and she never seemed to be bothered by the way Mother took charge of him: she never showed the least inclination to resist Mother’s possessiveness, and otherwise he was left in Jacomyn’s care, and Jacomyn had very few duties in the house other than to look after him. Mother and Jacomyn and old Dulsie fought silently and wordlessly over the possession of that squealing little bundle who now formed part of our family, and each was determined to stake her own claim and to stand upon her rights, while Sofie held herself aloof from the battle. It was Jacomyn, however, who raised Maans as a baby, and later I; for a few years it was as if he were my child, until Mother appropriated him completely and he finally married the woman she had selected for him. Thus that victory was Mother’s too.

  That spring, I might say, it was already as if Sofie was no longer one of us. What had happened that winter in the Karoo? Nothing that I can remember, nothing I ever knew about, and perhaps no more than the usual visits back and forth of neighbours and acquaintances, the music and the dancing. Sofie’s family and friends were also there, of course, and for a few months she was back in the world she knew. I remember the luxurious warmth and the rush of the swollen fountains and streams, the boisterous and excited shouting and the music from beyond the thorn trees – it could have been that year or just as well any other, because that was the way the winters in the Karoo usually passed. To us, however, it was never more than a delay and an interruption, and the annual return to the Roggeveld was a homecoming every time, so predictable that, when we delayed, the sheep found their own way to the familiar heights without waiting for us: upward through the narrow shadow of the kloof to the pale undulations of the plateau with its constant threat of unseasonable frost or snow, the glittering of the water in the dams, and the dark house with its sturdy walls. For us the return was a homecoming after every absence but for Sofie, could it ever have been anything but exile?

  It was late that year before spring finally arrived, and long after our return there was still frost. Sofie usually stayed inside, as she had done during the last days of her pregnancy, and our lessons were resumed, with the exception that I had suddenly been seized by a burning desire to unravel the secrets of the letters and to master the contents of the books, and to be able, in my childish eyes, to read and write as fluently as Pieter and she. Perhaps in my own way I also had something of Mother’s burning ambition, or perhaps I cherished the idle hope of having my progress rewarded with her approval. Or perhaps I merely hoped to be able to enter Sofie and Pieter’s world in that way, and to participate in what they shared, and from which I was excluded, something I could only associate with the reading and writing in the voorhuis, as I could find no other explanation for it. As usual, Pieter was often there when I had my lessons, teasing or distracting us, or arguing playfully with Sofie about the pronunciation, the meaning or the spelling of a word, until she herself began to laugh. Frowning and determined, with ink stains on my fingers, I bent over the stained paper, and when I looked up I saw them as they sat teasing each other across the table or conferring over a book. Heads close together, they spelt out the foreign text and followed the words with fingers accidentally touching, in the dimly-lit room where there was no observer but me, a child bent over her task, too busy to take notice and too young to understand.

  The chair is overturned violently or falls over as someone jumps up from the table, and I awake from my dream; the door is slammed thunderously. What has happened, and whose voices are arguing so fiercely in the other room? Only once or more often, I do not know, but it must have been more than once in that divided house in which we lived, for strife and anger were nothing st
range during my childhood years. Jakob’s scorn at my sudden quest for learning, Jakob’s increasing animosity towards Pieter, brother against brother, and Pieter’s insidious, relentless badgering, Sofie’s restlessness and her impatient outbursts against her husband, and in the kitchen the continuing feud between Dulsie and Jacomyn, and Dulsie’s squabbling with Gert. Spring arrived too late and too hesitantly that year, and in the renewed winter that followed our return from the Karoo, we were forced together inside the walls of the house too often, together in the voorhuis and kitchen with all our discontent and unrest. I still remember the glittering of snow on Pieter’s hair and on the jackal-skin around his shoulders; but no, that was earlier. What glittering do I remember then, blinding in the sunlight, and where did Pieter stand like that in the drifting snow, across which snowfield did he come walking out of the distance?

  It snowed – after our return that spring it was still snowing, I remember now, and in the voorhuis we sat around the fire-pan together. What else? And Pieter then, walking towards me across that glittering expanse, across all the years between? We had been waiting, and in the early morning Pieter came walking towards us across the glittering snowfield with the jackal-skin kaross around his shoulders; but no, not like that. What had we been waiting for in silence, and where did he come from when he returned to us, the time I recall now? Let me try to remember.

  Spring was late, and after our return from the Karoo it remained cold for a long time, and it snowed heavily at least once, that is how it was. I see us women around the fire-pan in the voorhuis, and carefully I feel my way, afraid to move too fast or to disturb, by a thoughtless movement, the delicate fretwork of the memory, for there is something here that is important. We are sitting in a small, silent circle, but it is not the customary closeness of cold evenings, for only the women are together, and I am aware of tension and distress, of the coming and going of men in the kitchen and someone stamping his feet on the clay floor of the kitchen to shake the snow from his shoes. On a low stool in our circle sits Jacomyn with the baby on her lap, and the child is crying plaintively, so that she rocks him to and fro to soothe him, but Sofie pays no attention to his whining. Sofie sits very straight in her chair, and where I sit beside her, pressed up against her as is my habit, I can see the white knuckles of the hand clutching the shawl around her shoulders. And that was how it was. And now – where to now? I hesitate for a moment, and then, suddenly, I know.

  When the weather came up, Father sent Pieter to help bring a flock of sheep that had been grazing near the edge of the mountain to the kraal, and before he could return, it began to snow, so heavily that it was impossible to go out to help the herdsman and him. Later that night, when the snowfall was over, a big fire was lit on the ridge behind the house to serve as a beacon in the dark, and the following day Father and Jakob and Gert went out to search for them; but though nothing was said, I do not believe anyone expected them to have survived the heavy snowfall on the exposed mountainside. So the morning passed with us waiting for news at home, and later I was standing in the doorway, gazing out over the glittering white world stretching away, so that it was I who saw the man in the distance walking towards the house across the snow, and across the distance and with eyes blinded by the reflected light I recognised Pieter and called out, and the women came running from the house. They had been trapped by the snowstorm on the edge of the escarpment when they had only just begun herding the sheep together, so that they were forced to take shelter in a hollow under an overhanging cliff, where they spent the night: at first light Pieter made his way through the heavy snow on the slopes to let us at home know that they were still alive, while the herdsman stayed behind to search for the scattered sheep. It was a long time before they could herd together the survivors from the crevices and caves into which they had fled before the storm and where they could sometimes be trapped for days before the snow began to melt.

  Thus Pieter survived and returned to us, and I remember a rare celebration in which we all took part, even in that divided household, for as I have said, while our jealousy, spite and resentment forced us apart, in our isolation we were always driven together again by the struggle for survival in that harsh world where we were inescapably dependent on each other’s help to face the dangers and hardships of daily life, like the white man and the Bushman, the master’s son and the servant, who survived the long dark of the winter’s night together in their shelter, at last to see daylight again. I remember Father pouring sweet wine at the table that evening of Pieter’s return and even I was allowed a mouthful. However, even here, in this festive moment, with the family gathered around the table, discord and unity were intertwined. What malicious remark did Jakob make about the wine poured for Pieter in such an unaccustomed way? That I do not remember any more, only Father’s answer: “For this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.” Jakob was about to reply, his face dark in the candlelight, but at that moment we heard a rustling sound and Sofie came to us from the shadows of her room, dressed in the rustling black wedding gown that she had put on as if it were truly a celebration we were partaking in here. I still remember that, whatever else I may have forgotten or may have tried to forget, the silence at the table as she took her place among us, Father pushing her glass of wine across the table and Mother, after a moment’s silence, remarking in an undertone, “We do not dress up like that here,” as if it were a reproach. I remember Sofie in her black dress, her eyes glittering, and Jakob’s dark face as he sat reluctantly sipping his wine, and the single candle next to Father’s chair that left most of the large room in darkness. The chair overturns, the chair is knocked over, the candle-flame flares fiercely as if the wind has suddenly blown open the shutters, and the candle topples and falls over the edge of the table, its faint glow extinguished. On our knees in the dark we feel around on the floor, we stumble over the table and chairs now unfamiliar to us, we search in the dark for the tinder-box, and call to Dulsie in the kitchen to bring a glowing ember from the fire to illuminate the sudden and complete darkness – that evening or some other evening, or perhaps never. I can only tell what I remember.

  That year spring did not bring the abundant flowers of the previous season, even though the spekbos stood white along the ridges. The sky softened and the light brightened and the landscape fleetingly took on a green radiance, but in hidden places along the escarpment, in crevices and rocky outcrops, patches of snow remained until late.

  With the arrival of warmer days Sofie resumed her walks in the veld, and she often took Jacomyn and the baby along; Mother and Dulsie had much to say about these walks, and about the child being taken outdoors like that, but as far as I know no one tried to forbid it. Sometimes she would ask me along too and, if I had no work to do, Mother silently and disapprovingly allowed me to go. I can still see our little group on that grey expanse, Jacomyn with the baby in her arms, and the wind of the escarpment plucking at the women’s frocks and at Sofie’s hair; I see Sofie with hair billowing around her head, laughing and clapping her hands, suddenly appearing as young and as carefree as a child again.

  The landscape surges in patterns of light and shade as the wind comes rolling over the ridges, and Sofie and Pieter laugh and call out to each other in words blown away by the wind – yes, Pieter, for Pieter was there too; how clearly I remember that. I am sitting on the ground beside Jacomyn, watching the baby asleep on the shawl she has spread out for him. “Where is Sofie?” I ask. “Never mind,” she answers distractedly, without raising her eyes. “Never mind, they are coming, they are coming.” I smell the air around us, sweet with the scent of wilde anys, and I notice the shrubs that have taken root in the clefts and the swaying white blooms of the spekbos on the ridges, that pale spring of grey and silver and white under a faded blue sky, with the water in the distant vlei glittering for a moment before growing dull once more as the entire landscape darkens under the billowing shadows that obscure the sun. That spring – yes, it was during that spri
ng, the second spring, when Maans had already been born; I was mistaken. They are coming, they are coming. The wind shakes the branches of the renosterbos, the harpuisbos and the white blooms of the spekbos, and I get bored where I sit waiting with Jacomyn. For whom, for what? I have forgotten, for years I forgot, but now I am slowly beginning to remember again. They are coming. Pieter, my brother, in his shirtsleeves, laughing among the shrubs and bushes of the veld, and Sofie, laughing, her hair billowing around her head – it was during that spring that I saw them running through the drifting, rolling landscape, stumbling along the treacherous shadows, stumbling, falling and disappearing under the dark surface of the shadows. Did he come with us? But that is unlikely. Did he meet up with us somewhere, was he waiting for us; could it have been prearranged, and if so, how and where and when? They are coming, they are coming, Jacomyn says quietly, her head averted as she plays with pebbles and gravel where she sits waiting, and the air is sweet with the scent of wilde anys. There is so much I have forgotten, only to remember again now, to try and understand, so much I will never remember any more, so much I will never understand.

  I jump up, I stumble through bushes and trip over rough, gnarled trunks, scraping my knees on rocks, shouting into the wind, groping, lost among the thickets and clefts of the dried-up fountains. Perhaps it is better not to remember it all, perhaps we are unable to endure the full burden of our memories. They slip, they slide and are lost to me. Under the ripples of shifting light and shadow they disappear, a bright wall of water separating them from me; uncomprehending, I stare down from the edge and see Sofie with her face upturned and her hair floating wide as she sinks down, see the brightness of Pieter’s white shirt in the intensifying darkness as he sinks down with arms outstretched to where my eye can no longer follow them. Their bodies, now weightless, are carried by the water into the depths, borne along the invisible stream. For a moment they turn towards each other in the swell – the pale faces with dilated eyes, the streaming hair, the outstretched arms; the surging water forces them together as in an embrace, as if in search of rescue, before they disappear together and, screaming, I jump up in my bed and recognise by the dim glow of the oil lamp my familiar room with the shutters closed against the night and Dulsie who has fallen asleep on the rug beside the bed where she is watching over me.