This Life (13 page)

How much later it was, I do not know exactly, but it must have been towards the end of that spring that we were awakened one morning by old Dulsie’s shouts, and learned with dismay that Jacomyn and Gert were also missing. By that time so many people had left, however, that this fresh disappearance did not really affect me, though it must have been difficult for Mother, because Dulsie had aged and could not do much in the house any more, while Father was practically helpless and had been depending on Gert more and more. I still remember waking at daybreak to hear Dulsie shouting in the voorhuis, and sleeping
on fitfully, vaguely aware of something I did not understand. What became of them? Gert took his own horses and the saddles and bridles and rifle that belonged to him, and Jacomyn her few pieces of clothing and trinkets and the floral shawl with the long tassels, and they disappeared from our world, over the edge of the mountains into the abyss. Much later, when Dulsie had become confused, in one of her incoherent fits of scolding and self-pity she railed against one of the Baster women who had helped us in the kitchen: “So insolent,” she muttered to herself, “just like that Malay meid who left here with Gert to go to the Boland.” Did she know, or suspect, or guess, or was she merely rattling on without knowing what she was saying? It was possible that they had indeed gone to seek their fortune in the Boland, for what other refuge could there have been for them with their horses and saddles and rifle, their bundle of clothing and trinkets? We neither saw nor heard from them ever again.

Did they love each other? I wonder suddenly, though the question has never occurred to me before and even now I hesitate to ask, for we never thought of our workers in those terms, and it never crossed our minds that our servants could fall in love or love each other, as seemed possible for us. But what is the use of wondering or asking, for I shall never know. Did they simply see a chance to escape, and conspire to outwit their masters, encouraged by the example of Pieter and Sofie before them? Or might there have been something like love, Gert and Jacomyn alone at the kraal wall, her black hair shining in the sun and the floral shawl around her shoulders? I shall never know.

I drew the blanket over my face against the pale daylight and turned over, turned away, and something brushed against my cheek, against my lips, and slid from the pillow and came to rest under the bedcovers, in the hollow of my neck, an unfamiliar weight of which I remained aware in my sleep, as I was aware of the voices in the voorhuis. I slept
on fitfullly until at last I awoke, and there, against my neck, I found a small cloth bundle which I unwrapped dazedly to discover a tiny ring. Not yet completely awake, I stared at it, trying to remember where I had seen it before, and then I realised it was Sofie’s ring with the little heart that she had worn the night of the New Year’s dance, and I realised that Sofie was back, that she had returned to us from afar, and I jumped up and ran barefoot through the voorhuis to her room to welcome her. But Sofie was not there: Father had gone out to the kraal, as there was no one else to do it, and in the kitchen Mother and Dulsie were feeding the baby, so that it took a while before someone noticed me, and Mother told me to get dressed and come and help with the chores. I returned to my room, returned to myself, returned to my silence, still holding in the palm of my hand the tiny ring with the heart that had gone unnoticed, and I hid it under the mattress where it would not be found readily. No more was said about those who had left, except sometimes by old Dulsie muttering to herself in the kitchen, and it was as if they were all dead and their deaths might as well have been entered in the Bible.

One day soon afterwards when no one was near to see what I was doing, I went outside. It was the first time I had left the house since the day of my flight, the day I was picked up in the veld, and I remember hesitating at the corner of the kitchen, my hand on the familiar roughness of the stone wall for support, overwhelmed by the wideness of the yard in front of me, by the sudden expanse of the veld and the blinding brightness of the silver light streaming from the lofty sky. I did not hesitate long, however, fearful of being caught at any moment. Slowly and resolutely I crossed the yard, light-headed and weak after my lengthy illness, Sofie’s ring in the palm of my hand. Straining against the spring breeze that threatened to unbalance me, I finally reached the graveyard beyond the ridge, and there I hid the ring
in the place between two stones where I had also secreted Meester’s little cross many years before, and I left it there where it would be safe. She had left it for me with Jacomyn, and when the time came for Jacomyn’s own departure, she came to my bedroom at night, barefoot in the dark, and left it on my pillow where I would discover it in the morning: I never found another explanation and if one existed, I prefer not to know about it, even now at the end of my life, but rather to keep believing that Sofie had let me have this gift months after her departure in the place of the farewell that was never said.

Gradually I recovered and adapted to the routine of the house and farm once more. For a while my reticence was still tolerated, but not for long, and one day I was sitting in the voorhuis when Dulsie pressed the baby into my arms impatiently. “There, take the child, he’s yours,” she snapped, and that is how I was given custody of Maans. He was just beginning to walk and he was a lively child, but he was never really naughty or disobedient and, as for me, I had all the time and patience in the world. We were good company for each other, for even when he began to talk, it was some time before he learned to understand or wonder or ask, and so it was possible for me simply to carry on at first, without having to think or remember. Moreover, he was a beautiful child, with Jakob’s dark eyes; of course Sofie had dark eyes too, but Maans was Jakob’s child, entirely his, or so I always thought. I came to love that child who had been given into my care so unexpectedly; yes, I loved him, until he grew up and outgrew me, and now there is almost nothing left of that closeness. He was in the house with me all day, either in my arms or on my lap, and later I took him out for short walks in the veld, until eventually I was no longer afraid of the space and the light; later it was good for me to have an excuse to escape from the quiet, gloomy house and sit in the veld with Maans playing near me. Dreamily, I turned my face to the sun again, unaware of what I was doing. I discovered anew the daylight and the day, and
the familiar world revealed itself to me once more. They are coming, they are coming; but I could no longer remember who, and I tried to keep the remaining memories at bay while I gazed mindlessly at the distant glitter of the dams in the light, until Maans became impatient because I did not listen or reply, and playfully tugged at my clothing or pulled my hair until it came undone and billowed around my head and across my face. As a child I went along with others without asking where we were going, others led me, carefree, by the hand; now I took this child out for walks and decided on our destination myself.

Father tried to find someone to work for him in Gert’s place, but none of the Basters he hired was as clever or trustworthy as Gert, and after a while some omission or oversight was always discovered, or there were complaints and objections, and the man bundled up his few possessions and left with his family; or otherwise the wives came to help in the house and quarrelled with old Dulsie, or Mother lost her temper and flew into them with a bundle of harpuisbos twigs as was her wont, and then the woman shouted angrily that she would not stay here a moment longer and urged her husband to claim his wages and leave. It became more and more difficult to find suitable workers, for it was during this time that the Basters in the Roggeveld were being forced from the land they owned or inhabited amongst us, and later no outspan or winter quarters or grazing was available to them, so that one by one they moved away from our region with their rickety wagons and their handful of sheep; it was probably also during those years that Father made the first of his land purchases, though as a child I knew nothing about it, neither did I have any interest in it. Thus, of all the families that worked for us briefly after Gert’s departure, I no longer remember individual names or faces, only a few anonymous voices, scraps of conversation at the back door or in the kitchen, jokes, shouts, curses or rhymes that still sound in my ears, swirling around
me in the dark, entwined and entangled after all the years, forming new patterns in which I can no longer recognise the familiar threads. They are dead and gone, every last one of them, leaving me without a name or a face, buried outside the wall encircling the white people’s graveyard, or somewhere along the road in the Karoo, or farther north in the interior where their journey had taken them, near Groot River, and the stones that were stacked over them have been scattered and washed away; their children and grandchildren have died too, somewhere on a plain, in a kloof or beside a campfire, and the last memory of their existence has been wiped out. Only their voices still sound in my ears here where I lie awake in the night.

Someone puts a karee log on the fire in the hearth, someone throws a handful of harpuisbos twigs on the fire, so that it crackles and flares, and I hear Dulsie’s voice as she coughs over her clay pipe, and then the others join the circle one by one; but the faces, fleetingly visible in the dancing firelight at the hearth, have become obscure to me. “The mountain big and blue, O how will I get through …” Who sang or hummed that song? “I seek them in the mountains …” – but that was Gert, that was earlier. Rhymes, verses, songs, like the ones Gert always used to make up.

But who was it? It is not Gert’s voice sounding in my ears, though I still remember the words clearly.

Words I did not understand as I sat listening in the dark; furtive laughter I did not understand and a sudden hush when someone approached, Mother on the threshhold of the kitchen … “Jakob’s voice and Esau’s hands”, and the women’s screams as the group scattered. Jakob’s voice and Esau’s hands, and how angry Mother had been, how relentlessly she had thrashed about with the stick she had grabbed, with pale, stony face and burning eyes, and the women in the kitchen scattering to escape, fleeing from the house. Esau’s hands … What had infuriated her so? The next day the woman who had said it left with her husband and her children and their few goats, and from the yard she shrieked imprecations in the direction of the house while Mother slammed the kitchen door and turned away, pale and trembling with silent fury. It was during that time, I am certain, for Gert had already left and Jakob lay in the graveyard under the stones that had been stacked over his grave, so I knew they could not have been talking about him. Or could it have been he – Jakob, who had slipped and fallen into the dark crevice on the mountainside, hands out-stretched against the rock?

Now I remember again: suddenly the thread running through the design becomes clearly visible in the dark. The women were saying what a beautiful child Maans was. Pieter had also been such a spindly little thing when he was small, Dulsie went on; Jakob was never like that. Yes, one of the women added, it is Jakob’s voice but Esau’s hands, and the people sitting at the hearth in the dark burst out laughing as if they understood the words, just as Mother entered the kitchen and overheard them. I did not understand, or perhaps I simply chose not to understand, just as I always did when a choice was possible for me; but in the end understanding was inevitable as the stories did the rounds, stories repeated with unexpected acrimony or slipping out before the speaker could help it, stories repeated because no one realised I was present or because they thought I could not hear; warp
and woof woven together over the years into a tapestry in which I can finally make out the pattern. Could Maans have been Pieter’s child? In later years, when it became possible for me to ponder and to question, many years later, when I was growing older and Pieter himself was approaching the end of his life, I often reflected on this matter, and at times Maans must have wondered why I was gazing at him so quizzically, as if I were searching for something in his features. I never found anything, however, no, I never did believe that Maans could be Pieter’s child; but that must have been what people in those parts believed or wanted to believe and what they told each other, until even I became aware of it, until it became an accepted fact that no one questioned any more and in its own way the rumour became more important than anything that might actually have occurred. But who still remains that knew Jakob and Sofie, or cares about Pieter’s memory; who still speaks of these matters? Who remembers?

At the time we must have been the subject of a great deal of gossip, and what else could be expected, with Jakob’s death and Pieter and Sofie’s disappearance, with Gert and Jacomyn’s sudden and mysterious departure and, finally, my long illness as well; what else could be expected in our small, isolated world where everyone ended up knowing everything about everyone else, that miserable handful of white and coloured people in the boundless desolation at the edge of the mountains? Perhaps they tried to help, as people will in times of affliction or need, and perhaps they made offers of goodwill. I remember the people who helped search for Jakob and the neighbours who attended his funeral, lined up silently along the walls of the voorhuis, but I know that as a child I did not see their presence as a sign of sympathy, but rather as an intrusion. Oh, when I was a child it was just too rare for us to receive visitors, and possibly I was simply unused to it and the curiosity and distrust I remember were no more than
imagination on my part. But the unspoken words that I remember just as clearly, the questions and the speculations that I overheard incidentally? Where did a group of men once talk about that day, and someone wondered who had searched for Jakob in the kloof without finding his body where it had been lying all the time? The details I no longer recall, but I remember overhearing the question and waiting for an answer that was never supplied. Those men all knew the answer, and the question and the silence that followed were an accusation, even though it was never uttered. Who searched in that kloof, and how did Jakob lose his footing and, with mangled face, fall down into the narrow cleft between the rocks? I shall never know; neither do I wish to know. It is better so.

Did the neighbours begin to avoid us again after these events, or were they simply discouraged from coming to our home? When visitors arrived, Father was always glad to see them, they were welcomed and coffee was served, or sweet wine or brandy but, just as they remained intruders to me, so they did to Mother as well, and even more so in the time after Jakob’s death and Pieter’s disappearance. People inevitably noticed that there was no welcome in her stiff hospitality and sparse words and gradually they stopped coming again. At last the only visitors who still came, were a neighbour in search of an absconded apprentice or a lost sheep, or a servant sent to borrow an awl or a bag of horseshoe-nails.

Only the small, familiar sounds of the house still filled the silvery days, and the howling of the wind around the corners of the building, against the shutters or in the thatch when I awoke at night and could not fall asleep again. Father still mounted his horse painfully and attended auctions to buy sheep or land; later he bought a black Cape cart in which he set off to attend funerals in the district, but I do not recall Mother often accompanying him, for it was as if she were more
withdrawn than ever during those years, though the passion and the zeal and the sudden, unpredictable flashes of temper had intensified. No, actually I cannot remember Mother ever leaving the house in the years after Jakob’s death, except when the minister came from Worcester and there were church meetings on neighbouring farms.

Those meetings and the long journey to Worcester for Nagmaal I remember because they became an ever greater ordeal for me as I grew older. I felt strange and ill at ease among the children of my own age, and awkwardly I hovered at the fringe of their company until it was possible to escape. Once I was standing behind an outspanned cart when I heard a girl ask where I was, and someone said something I could not make out in a cold, disdainful tone. “Oh, that mad creature,” an older woman remarked; and that must have been how I appeared to them, the thin, shy, lisping girl with the scar on her forehead who fled from the people, the tents, the outspanned carts and wagons, to escape from the friendly interaction, shy as a deer in the ridges, dashing away from the people, the voices, the greetings and laughter and jesting, the nicknames, the whispering in corners and the incomprehensible jokes and innuendo, the girls with their arms around each other and the boys to one side with their impertinent glances and their nervous excitement, the approval and disapproval of the older women lined up against the wall, the entire united community of other people into which Mother and Father were briefly assimilated, but in which I could play no part. I turned and fled to the servants’ fire beyond the outspan, and I warmed myself and shared their coffee when it was offered to me, and soon enough they forgot about my presence and continued as if I were not there.

That winter after my illness we all went down to the Karoo as usual and when we returned that spring, Miss Le Roux came with us. Someone had probably brought her from Worcester and Father must have
fetched her halfway with the cart, I do not know, for I was told nothing, and even Dulsie spoke only vaguely of the stranger who was coming. However, she came from Worcester to join us in the Karoo before we returned to the Roggeveld, for I was standing in front of our reed house with Maans on my hip when the cart came to a halt and Miss Le Roux climbed down slowly in her black dress. Mother’s formal welcome and my own mystified silence could not have put her at ease and, in fact, she probably never felt at home with us: as strange as she seemed on her arrival at our outspan in the Karoo that afternoon, so she remained to us, in spite of living in our house for two years. I soon found out all about her, but only because I was her sole companion in her loneliness, for I certainly never questioned her, nor did I show the slightest interest.