This Life (23 page)

The house was filled with a delicate spring light as bright as the reflected glitter of the snow. Sometimes I still found myself waiting or getting ready for something, sometimes I would start up suddenly because I thought someone was calling me, but that did not last long, and I soon became accustomed to my freedom. Sheltered by the garden wall or the stoep, the flowers emerged hesitantly in the cold spring, painstakingly grown, sheltered and kept alive, and in the bare, cultivated gardens of the town the trees, swaying in the eastwind, put forth buds; until October or November every night still held the possibility
of frost, every day might bring a sudden whirl of snow across the rocky ridges. Against a stoep pillar of the parsonage the climbing rose Mrs Reyneke planted when she and her husband moved in the year before bloomed, but that same spring she died, and she lay buried in front of the church without ever having seen the first blooms on the young plant, their bright, translucent white petals unfurling in the bleak chill of the Roggeveld spring.

For a while people called on me on their return from the Karoo to convey their sympathy, and each time I heard the sound of horses’ hoofs in the street or a vehicle in front of the house, the squeak of the gate or the sound of footsteps across the boards of the stoep, I cringed. Gradually the danger passed, however, and the threat diminished, and it was as if people mercifully forgot about my existence, perhaps because I led such a retired life and took so little part in their activities, a silent spectator on the fringe of their meetings, a timid tantetjie in the background at their social events. Or perhaps they lost patience with my timidity and my silence, and limited themselves to the most basic tokens of politeness and goodwill. Only Maans and Stienie still came in to Nagmaal with Pieter and Betta and spent a few days with me, but it was their house too, though I saw them as intruders each time and their arrival as an invasion. For a few days the house would be filled with the sound of Stienie’s high heels on the floorboards and her chattering and her questions, her cross-examination and instructions and rummaging through cupboards – “Why don’t you rather do it this way, Tantetjie?” Fortunately Betta kept her company most of the time, for that was her task in life, and after a few days they left again and I saw the cart making its way past the thinly-scattered houses of the town and following the white road back to the farm, and I was delivered once more to my own freedom.

Thus I lived in the town house alone. How did I pass the days? I began to read again, I remember – I never had much time to read before, and Mother was always impatient when she saw me with a book and she would soon find something for me to do. The young minister would sometimes bring me a volume of sermons or a religious pamphlet because he knew Tannie liked such things, and he would smile at my strange pastime, and there were a few other people in town who also had books and who would lend them to me; the magistrate sent over his newspapers once he had finished with them, and when people in the district found out that I read, they sometimes arrived with an old book, or even a case of books they had inherited and had no use for. I read whatever I found, whatever I could, now that Mother was no longer there to complain about duties that were being shirked or candles that burnt down too quickly. “You must take care of your eyes, Tannie, you read far too much,” young Mr Reyneke scolded playfully, for he did not set much store by book-learning and his Dutch sermons were full of mistakes.

I wrote. Sometimes someone would still ask me to write a letter, and the writing materials were kept in the drawer of the dining-room table; sometimes I would take them out needlessly, the writing paper and the steel-nibbed pens and the ink, and arrange them on the table, and I would write, not the words someone else was dictating, but my own words that I had to seek and find before writing them down. Miss Le Roux had taught me to write neatly, in even, round letters with fine open loops and regular downstrokes, but when I tried to write for myself, my skilfulness would forsake me completely, and the paper would be rumpled and blotted, like the soiled, wrinkled cloths on which I had learned to embroider as a child. What did I wish to write? I no longer know – not letters, for there was no one who expected a letter from me; I suppose just the things I would have said if there had
been someone to talk to, someone willing to listen and to understand, and if my tongue had not been burdened with obstructions. I know that I would sit there for a long time, facing the empty page on the bare tabletop and trying to find words, and when at last I was done, I would fold the paper several times and put it away at the back of a drawer in my wardrobe, behind the stockings and underclothes, where no one would find it. After a while I stopped, however, and one day I took out all those folded notes and burnt them in the kitchen stove without reading them again. It was not that I had lost heart because I found it too hard, only that I felt no further need to do it. And so I lived in town; for a number of years.

Maans had a tombstone erected on Mother’s grave, a large white stone from the Cape, conspicuous among all the low, flat headstones and stone mounds, with names and dates and texts from Scripture that the minister had helped him select; I touched it, and it was as cold to my fingers as the frozen clods of the soil that had covered the grave after her funeral.

Maans was doing well, for he was a meticulous, careful and hardworking farmer; moreover, he had inherited well, of course, and rumour had it that Stienie also inherited well when her father died, for she had been an only child. The people in our district loved Maans, solemn and restrained as he was, and they trusted his honesty, just as they had trusted Father all those years; and because he was slow to talk or react and deliberate in his judgement, he never really made any enemies. It went almost without saying that he would be a deacon and later an elder; when our town eventually got its own municipality, he became a town councillor, and when the time came, he was nominated as member of the district council. I do not know whether Maans himself was eager to serve in all these capacities, for he did not really enjoy
meetings and conferences and public appearances, but he accepted the elections and nominations and he fulfilled his duties faithfully.

Because of all these commitments Maans and Stienie came to town more often, so that I saw them more regularly. To me it seemed as if Maans never really enjoyed having to drive in to town, dressed up in a stiff collar and tie and a suit or a frock-coat, but Stienie enjoyed it: when she was not in Worcester on some errand, or at the baths in Goudini, she was often in town, and sometimes I wondered if she would not have preferred to live in the town house herself, for I sensed that she was not as happy on the farm as in earlier years. She had dresses made, copied from pictures in the magazines she ordered from Cape Town, and she always wore the most stylish outfits in our little congregation, dresses with bows and frills and tassels and trains, as was fashionable in those days, and small hats with ribbons and flowers, so that everyone looked up on Sundays when she entered and took her place among the wives of the elders. I believe people learned to watch out for her quick eyes and sharp tongue, but because of Maans’s position she was a well-respected woman in our community. To look at her, you would not say that she had almost everything a woman could desire, and certainly more than most other women, for Stienie never really seemed happy or content. Could it have been because they had no children? Perhaps, but as far as I know, Stienie had never been particularly fond of children. Could it have been because there was no heir to the farms and the sheep flocks and the family name and status? But how could I understand and explain such mysteries, I who had avoided Jasper Esterhuysen when he was sent across the dance floor by his mother; I who had shut the door behind Abraham van Wyk as he departed and had made no attempt to respond to his offer? I never understood what Stienie’s childlessness might have meant to her, neither did I understand the meaning of her eventual pregnancy. These
things remained as incomprehensible to me as the other mysterious matters the married women discussed in undertones so that I should not hear, and of what importance were my suspicions and inferences, and who cared about them?

As I have said, old Betta was living on the farm with Maans and Stienie during that time and took care of the household. When they came in to town periodically, they would sometimes bring her along and at other times they would leave her behind, perhaps according to Stienie’s moods, but when she did come, she never accompanied them anywhere, and when they went out, they left her with me, where she would crochet and talk about her ailments and grievances, the stout, middle-aged widow with her monotonous, whining voice and the endless stream of complaints and reproofs she poured out without expecting a reply, while her nimble fingers carried on working uninterruptedly and the crochet hook flashed in the light.

Did that liberation, that freedom, that dizzying solitude after Mother’s death really last as long as I imagine now? No, it is just my memory playing tricks on me again, my imagination betraying me; it was only a few years, and even then the solitude was constantly interrupted by Maans and Stienie coming to town for Nagmaal or church services or meetings, and by Betta with her flashing crochet hook and her complaints. Only for a few weeks between these interruptions with all the accompanying visitors and noise and upheaval, could I actually enjoy my precious freedom; the visits remained interruptions, and reality was the unhindered weeks in between when I led my own life, alone in the empty house, silently facing the unmarked white page.

That all was not well on the farm, I had realised for some time, no matter how little attention I paid to Betta’s tales. Nevertheless, she was a single woman dependent on Stienie, and thus she had no option but to endure and to carry on, and there was no advice I could give her,
even if there were any point in getting involved myself. One day I just heard that Maans had brought Betta and her suitcase to town in the cart, and left her with Tant Miemie Olivier, who was somehow related to her; the two of them lived together until they both died, and everyone said, oh, what a shame, poor Betta, it is not right, and shook their heads disapprovingly. In my presence they said nothing, as usual, and Stienie herself maintained an eloquent silence on the subject, while I gave Betta no encouragement to air her grievances when she called on me. “I would rather not say anything,” she would remark pointedly, “after all, she is related to you as well”, though Stienie was her own flesh and blood. Then she would fall silent resentfully.

It could not have been more than a few months later that Maans came in to town on his own one day, something that did not happen often, and as he sat in the kitchen watching me prepare padkos for his return journey, he asked timidly and in a roundabout way whether I would consider coming to live on the farm with them again. He was so tentative and long-winded that I knew what he wanted to say long before he came out with the request, and I was able to prepare myself while slicing the meat and bread, without having to listen to any more. Why had he been the one sent to ask me then, I wondered, while it must have been Stienie’s decision that I should return, and it was clear that he was reluctant to follow her orders? Yes, of course I would come, I assured him when he had finished, and I could see how relieved he was, just like that day when I had told Stienie, no, I do not mind living in town, after she had already decided how it would be. If it had all happened just a few weeks or months earlier, I might still have shied away and tried to find a way out, or I might have tried to delay the matter, but now I simply accepted the new arrangement and prepared to vacate the house, emptying the chest of drawers in my room and packing my things; that must have been when I burned
the folded notes in the kitchen stove before allowing the fire to go out. Of course there would have been no point in resisting or delaying the matter, for I was a single woman without any possessions or income, after all, living in Maans and Stienie’s house, and just as dependent on their charity as old Betta; but the thought did not even enter my mind. That period of absolute freedom had not lasted long, dispersed over scattered months, weeks and days, and spanning a few years; it was a matter of a single uncertain spring, a single noiseless day when the empty house had been filled with the reflected light of a snowfall; but it had been enough, and I knew it was time to return.

Maans sent Pieter in to town with one of the farm-hands and the cart to fetch me and my possessions, and he slept over in town that evening. It was the first time since his return that I was completely alone with him, and I am at a loss how to describe that evening we spent together, for over the years he had become a stranger to me, so that his presence was as impersonal as that of any unknown visitor that I had to entertain; yet at the same time I knew that this strange, silent man sitting with me in the candle-light was my brother, my very own brother, my beloved brother, and it was because of that distressful knowledge that I was unable to eat that night, and not because I had to take leave of the house where I had lived for so long. He ate his food, head bowed over his plate in the candlelight, and he did not speak except to say yes, please, and no, thank you, in reply to my own words, peacefully retreated into his own distant world, just as we had known him since his return twenty years before, a thin man with grey hair, who handled his knife and cup with stiff, wooden movements and never looked at me. Never again would the two of us be alone together like this, I realised, never again would we be as certain that we would not be disturbed, never would such an opportunity for frankness and openness present itself to me again. I wanted to reach out and touch
his hand, I wanted to stretch out and reach for him, I wanted to pave the way for the questions I had kept bottled up for almost a lifetime; but it was impossible for me, still impossible, and I sat across the table from him and did not say a word.