This Life (27 page)

At first the war did not change our lives on the farm at all – it was something the men discussed where people sat together, and we were unaffected by it until the commandos invaded the Kolonie and the big English camp was pitched at Matjiesfontein. It was during this time that the ramparts and forts were built along the edge of the escarpment and troops guarded the passes leading from the Roggeveld to the Karoo, and on our farm, too, there was an English camp beyond the dams for weeks. Stienie was pleased, for they had considered moving to the town house, but with the protection of the English, at least we were safe, she said. She was especially pleased when a few of the officers came to ask whether they might play the piano, for the piano in the voorhuis was seldom used; and so they came to play, and she served them tea in her best cups and sat talking to them in the voorhuis, for she had learned to speak English in Cape Town. Maans was not very happy about the English on the farm, for although he was a man of peace who tried not to take sides, he knew people in the district did not approve; there was nothing he could do about it, however,
and they paid well for the sheep they purchased to slaughter, and for the bread Stienie had the servants bake for them. After a while they departed, however, and we were left to our own devices; the men and the horses and the tents disappeared almost overnight, but the veld beyond the dams remained trampled and overgrazed for a long time to show where their camp had been.

After this there was only a garrison in town and the town itself was barricaded, and commandos came and went on our farm as they pleased. Stienie mentioned again that it might be safer to move to town, but when the town was attacked by the Boers, she decided it would be better to stay with her friends in Cape Town. No one suggested that I should move to the town house, neither did they suggest that I should accompany Stienie for my own safety, and thus Maans and I spent the war alone together on the farm, with Annie and her daughter in the old homestead. There was martial law and the horses were commandeered: we could not ride anywhere, and no one came to visit any more. In the Hantam and the Roggeveld the commandos moved about freely, and from time to time they would suddenly appear in our yard, asking for food or clothing. I do not think Maans was very pleased with these surprise visits, but he could not refuse to give them what they demanded, and many of our sheep were slaughtered for which he never received a penny. One New Year they captured one of Maans’s herdsmen and another man at Bastersfontein because they had supposedly spied for the English and, after thrashing them, shot and killed them. Their wives came to Maans to complain and I remember their cries and wails in the yard; I stood at the kitchen door, just behind Maans, and looked out, my eyes blinded by the glint of the sun on the white dust in the yard, but there was nothing I could do for them, and Maans was equally helpless, for it was war and the invaders did as they pleased.

For a long time we could go nowhere and it was safe nowhere, and Maans suggested a bit hesitantly that it might be better if I did not wander about in the veld on my own as was my habit. More than that he did not say; but afterwards I usually went out when he was not at home to worry about me. To me it was different, however, as if the earth and the veld I had known all my life had suddenly changed, as if the familiar places had suddenly become treacherous and the familiar land could no longer be trusted, glistening and dangerous as a yellow cobra slithering away among bushes and rocks. Some of the young men in our district joined the commandos and some of them were shot dead in skirmishes, or sometimes one of them was caught and executed as a rebel, young men I scarcely knew, though their parents or grandparents were of my own generation. In our isolation our only information came from the herdsmen who brought us news of these battles and executions, and the servants knew more about the movements of the commandos and the troops than they ever told us.

Something had changed and when the war was over, life was not the same. Maans returned to Parliament in Cape Town, but he was past fifty and his hair was quite grey: sometimes, when I noticed how old and tired he looked, I was suddenly reminded of the child I had piggy-backed and raised alone, and the schoolboy who had wanted to become a soldier. Did he remember the water glittering in the sunlight among the reeds, I sometimes wondered; was there a vague memory from his childhood of tears pouring down my cheeks as I knelt in the veld, and did he ever wonder uneasily where this obscure image came from or what it meant? Or had even that been forgotten?

What would have happened if Father had allowed him to leave? Would he have been happier now, or unhappier? Who can tell? Stienie spent even less time at home during these years, for she often complained of her health and said she had to stay in Cape Town to be
close to the doctors who could treat her, or else she would be somewhere at the seaside, or at the baths at Goudini or the sanatorium at Caledon. When she was at home, she was restless and unhappy, and the only time she seemed content for a while was when visitors came over or she could find a reason to entertain. Her eyes remained restless and searching and her voice took on a sharp and whining tone. As she grew older, she gained weight and she dressed more and more outrageously in clothes she brought with her from Cape Town: she had always been a little grand for us but dare I say she now became flamboyant, with her gussets and frills and trains, the hats with their flowers and ribbons and veils and large hat pins and the ostrich feathers – Stienie had always loved ostrich feathers. Where people used to smile good-naturedly about her dress style before, their remarks were less charitable now, and especially the women were quite vicious at times. Oh, it was mostly the younger people who did not know her well who were less than kind in their opinions and quicker to appoint blame and pass judgement, and they sometimes made her seem more ludicrous than she really was.

Maans continued to be as well-respected as always, but yet there was a new sharp edge to people’s feelings towards him that had not been evident before, for the war had brought discord to our district, and certain people felt he had collaborated too well with the government, while others thought he had been too friendly with the commandos on the farm. Where people had teased him for years about having so little to say in Parliament, he was now blamed by some for not contributing enough, and by others for what he said when he did speak. I heard him being disparaged, in the kitchen I overheard the words, in the passage where the door stood ajar, at the fringe of the company, behind the backs of those who had forgotten about me, as usual, and with increasing certainty I knew that he could no longer
count on the same affection and trust as earlier. What had happened? I did not know myself, for it was something from outside, that bright serpentine path of gold, flashing in the sun, making its way across the faded landscape.

In the end Maans himself became aware of these feelings. He might never have become involved with politics had it not been for Stienie, and had it not been for her, he would probably also have retired a long time ago, for the duties and responsibilities and the long absences from the farm had become an increasingly heavy burden for him, and it became clearer from one year to the next how reluctantly he shouldered it. However, each time he mentioned retiring, Stienie interrupted with that quick motion of her head and shoulders, and laughingly made some deprecating remark to show he did not really mean what he was saying; but at last, when there was talk about a Union, he said he would stay on only until the new Parliament had been elected, and this time Stienie did not interrupt, but listened to his words in silence, staring at her rings as if she had no interest in his decision. He had grown old, this child I had raised, and there was more silver than black in his hair; when I looked up at his words and saw him like that in the lamplight, I was suddenly afraid, as if I had just been reminded how quickly the years had passed. And if Father had allowed him to become a soldier when it had been his one desire, would it really have made a difference?

I could look across the table in the lamplight and see; I could stand in the dim light of the passage or in the voorhuis behind the lined curtain, and hear – that was all. There was nothing I could do to prevent anything, or to change the course of events, and over the years I had withdrawn so far from these affairs that no sense of involvement remained. I still went in to town for Nagmaal and attended church services with Maans and Stienie but afterwards, when the house was
filled with visitors, I began taking the liberty of withdrawing from the company, and if people initially noticed my absence, they soon became used to it. On the farm I gave orders in the kitchen when guests arrived and saw that coffee was served in the voorhuis, but I never joined the company any more, and though at first Stienie had frowned at my lack of manners with that impatient little shrug of her round shoulders, she did not say anything, and in all honesty there was no one among the visitors who requested my company or who missed me.

Once I attended a wedding with Maans and Stienie unwillingly, the silent and disregarded guest at the fringe of the merriment, and I heard the women clustered together in the light of the chandelier discussing Stienie over their glasses of sweet wine. “Yes,” one of them remarked disapprovingly, “Maans is seldom at home these days. His mad old aunt looks after the farm for him.” I no longer remember who spoke those words, I do not even recall whose wedding it was or where it took place; I just remember being seated in the shadowy corner and hearing that observation that no one contradicted, and then the sudden silence that fell when they realised I had been sitting there all the time and had overheard their conversation. For a moment the yawning abyss returned and I found myself on the opposite side once again, almost indistinguishable in the distance; but then they quickly changed the subject, and where I sat, excluded from their circle, I was overwhelmed by the realisation of my own freedom. After this I deemed it unnecessary to attend any more weddings or funerals in the district. I still went in to Nagmaal with Maans and Stienie and attended church with them, but my last discernible connection with the people around us had been severed.

When I was a child, we had no mirror in the house and thus I never had the chance to see my own face. In these years I learned to live without mirrors again, as I had no further need of them, for I knew very
well what I looked like: a dishevelled old woman, no longer capable of sensible conversation or any form of intercourse with her neighbours, unsociable and slow of speech, with a peculiar scar across her forehead, scorched by the sun, tousled by the wind, half-wild as a result of her strange and isolated existence. That was all; and this is all that has finally remained: an old woman alone in a bed in a dark room, voiceless and paralysed, so far retreated into herself that no return to life is possible any more. All.

What does it matter? Let the girl sleep on the cot at the foot of the bed: she is young and her life lies ahead of her. Why should she wake and get up? There is nothing more she can do for me.

What did I expect when I kept listening for the cock’s crow, peering through the dark to try and make out the first grey light of dawn; what could the morning bring that the night had not already given me? I have remembered what I had forgotten, I have articulated what I did not want to know, and my mission has been accomplished; I am tired now, and I want to rest, undisturbed by anyone, or by the day with its bustle and noise. The pattern has been laid down and the slivers and fragments joined together, my task fulfilled, and it is not for me to judge whether it has been done well or poorly. Only one more thing, seeing that I have gone so far and said so much; only one more thing, even though I do not understand why, and then it will be enough.

During these last years after the war, when I had detached myself from all the affairs of the district, people began to look me up in my isolation on the farm, just as they had done in the old days when there had been few educated people in our parts and they had come to ask me to read or write their letters. Again it was the simple people who came to me, poor people and bywoners, and when I was not at home when they arrived, they simply sat in their carts in the shade of the wall,
waiting for me to return; sometimes there were coloured people in a cart drawn by mules who had come a long way from the Riet River district or the Nuweveld because they seemed to have heard of me. Timidly these visitors described their ailments to me, and I discovered that they credited me with a special knowledge of plants and herbs, for this was how people in the district explained my solitariness and my long rambles in the veld, and in their simplicity they interpreted my loneliness and isolation as signs of wisdom and power: humbly they revealed their sores, their ulcers, their swellings to me, and then looked at me expectantly, confident that I could cure them. There was nothing I could do for them, however, for, faced by their suffering, I was as helpless as they and I felt ashamed by the trust they put in me so undeservedly: I could only mutter an apology, suggest a few remedies that I happened to know of and give them some balm or solution from the medicine chest, and shamefacedly watch the rickety cart struggle down the road again, its passengers returning home with their pain and their sorrow. Perhaps there was no one else to listen or help and they appreciated my care and attention, but over the years they kept coming, for they truly believed I knew how to alleviate their pain; and how annoyed Stienie was when these ramshackle vehicles came struggling across the yard when she was at home, and how scathingly she denounced these visitors, though never in my presence. What could I do, however, caught between her disapproval and their groundless faith and only too painfully aware of my own inadequacy? These sufferers were the only people who still needed me, no matter how unfounded their faith in my abilities, and their infrequent visits the only connection that still tied me to the world.