This Life (6 page)

Thus at New Year there was dancing on our farm, as I have said, and for days, for weeks, our house was filled with bustle and something I might even describe as exhilaration, though perhaps I am thinking mostly of Sofie when I say this, for she was as exuberant as a child at the thought of merriment and people and music after the first months of isolation and silence she had experienced with us, laughing and gay in the dark house where we lived side by side in silence, dancing through the darkness like a flame, so that, in spite of my own shyness and reserve, I, too, was touched by her happiness. The musicians had already arrived and were exchanging banter with the servants in the kitchen, and now and again one of them played a quick tune, a fragment of a waltz or seties on the fiddle or accordion, that echoed through the shadowy house provocatively and defiantly; outside Pieter called out that the first guests were arriving. The sun had not yet gone down, but inside the bedroom a candle had to be lit, and Sofie turned to me from the small looking-glass over which she had stooped to pin up her hair; out of the gloom, out of the shadows, out of the dark she
rose up towards me like a swimmer from the dark waters of a pool, entangled in the heavy, gleaming folds of her black satin gown, her wedding gown, that she was wearing here with us for the first time tonight, and she reached out to me with both hands. “Sussie, you have to help me,” she whispered, her eyes shining with excitement, as if she wanted to share a secret with me, but she only wanted me to fasten the beads around her neck, beads as black as her dress, unexpectedly radiating faint colours when I held them up to the candlelight. “These are rubies,” she told me, still whispering as if it were a secret we were sharing, and my hands were trembling so much that I struggled to fasten the tiny hook. Silently I touched the dark, shiny gemstones and the dark, smooth fabric of her gown, for such things I had never seen before, and I looked at the rest of her finery, the narrow gold bracelet and the little gold ring with the heart. Sofie’s dark head bent over the candle-flame and the pulsing of the restless music through the house and Gert calling outside and Pieter who came running across the yard, laughing with excitement, and the vast, open land out there, widespread, basking in the last rays of the sun, though here inside the house it had long been dark, the rolling veld with the shrubs and rocky ridges aflame in the late light and in the distance the dust of the vehicles on their way here.

We did not have many neighbours we could invite, here along the edge of the plateau in the sparsely populated Roggeveld with its scattered homesteads, but neighbourliness was neighbourliness, and those who were able to ride over, did so, amazed, uncertain and inquisitive about this sudden hospitality on our side; from Kanolfontein and Driefontein and Jakkalsfontein and Gunsfontein the people came, and their carts stood outspanned against the kraal wall. The house was filled with people and noise and activity, the golden glow of candlelight filled it; the women with their tiny glasses of sweet
wine took their places on chairs against the walls of the voorhuis and outside in the dark one could hear the laughter of the men where they gathered around the brandy cask.

I remember Mother that evening, with shining eyes and a rare blush on her cheek-bones, rigid, tense and watchful, as if the arrival of the strangers posed a threat to her, and this rare show of friendship exposed her to danger, but nevertheless also proud of her home and the hospitality it could offer, so proud that, with all her strenuous efforts to be gracious and friendly, she was almost defiant towards her guests. I remember Mother, and Sofie in her glistening black gown, the focal point of that entire gathering, obscured for a moment as the candle-flames flickered in the draught or people moved past the light, but then glowing before my eyes once more in the diffused light. I noticed the mistrustful neighbours lined up against the wall studying her, and the jealousy of the country girls, huddling together shyly in their Sunday clothes; I saw the eyes of the men weighing her, though I did not recognise or understand that expression, and no matter how incomprehensible it has remained to me after all the years, I have seen it often enough since to know the words people use to describe it: wonder, admiration, lust and desire.

Jakob could not or would not dance, Blink Jakob, thickset, muscular and awkward – his thick neck I remember, and the broadcloth jacket stretched tight across his shoulders. Thus Jakob soon disappeared among the men around the brandy cask in the dark, and the young fellows were free to compete with each other for Sofie’s favour: the bashful, reticent farm lads, ill at ease in their Sunday best, the swaggering young men in their stiff collars and embroidered waistcoats, the unassuming and the bolder ones, the confident and the hesitant ones of our small world were crowding around her in the voorhuis. I sat on the floor in a corner, outside the circle of the candlelight, among the
guests’ children in whom I took no interest and who, after their initial efforts to make friends had proved fruitless, had soon forgotten all about me. Gradually they became weary, however, and fell over where they were sitting or lying, but I stayed awake and observed, sleepless in the shadows, and heard the remarks the married women along the wall made amongst each other when Mother was not near, and the whispers of the girls crowding around the looking-glass in the bedroom by candlelight.

Without taking the least notice of Jakob’s absence, apparently even unaware of it, Sofie danced the night away, and as the other dancers grew tired and dropped out or went outside to where the brandy was, more and more often it was my brother Pieter who was her dancing partner, just as tireless as she was. I believe the farm lads of our district never really knew what to make of Pieter, but he was popular among the girls, with his quick tongue and nimble feet, his teasing manner, his agility and grace. Where, among us, had he ever got the opportunity to learn how to dance, I wonder now; but he could certainly dance, and well too, and all night long you saw his slender body moving among the dancers as if he could find no rest; later he took off his jacket and danced in his shirtsleeves, and more and more often it was Sofie that he chose as his partner. And why not? After all, they were the best dancers there. Pieter in his shirtsleeves and Sofie in her glistening gown of black satin, together in the fine haze of the dust stirred up by the feet of the dancers on the dung floor, in the golden glow of the tallow candles that lit up the room hazily, together, as in a dream, with the child in the corner watching and remembering, listening and remembering: the envy, the disapproval, the resentment, the spite, the desire that surrounded them, and the two young people together, as in a dream.

In the end I, too, fell asleep among the other children on the floor,
and someone must have picked me up there and carried me to my room, for when I awoke I was lying on the little cot underneath the window, covered with a patchwork quilt, and strange children were sleeping in my own bed. It was the noise of gunshots that had awakened me, for it was dawn and outside the young men were welcoming the new year: I knelt on the cot, resting my elbows on the high window-sill, and looked out at the silver-grey morning, chilly and still as a pool. The shouting and shooting were distant and came from somewhere at the front of the house, but inside it had become silent, only the sound of a single violin lingered somewhere, persistent, languid and melancholy, as if the fiddler no longer knew how to finish the tune, and so just kept on playing in the dim light of dawn. He must have been sitting at the hearth in the kitchen with the servants, seeking out a little warmth against the chill of the morning; and in the empty yard Gert and Jacomyn were dancing together in the silver daylight to the rhythm of the thin, dreamy waltz.

Jacomyn – yes, I have not mentioned Jacomyn at all; but she came to us from the Karoo with Sofie; she followed Sofie as she climbed from the wagon when Jakob brought her to us as his bride, and Mother told Dulsie to take her to the kitchen. She was no more than a girl, only a few years older than Sofie herself, and her mother had been a slave in Sofie’s family in the old days, for Oom Wessel and his family were wealthy people, as I have said, who owned slaves just like Ouma’s people in the Bokkeveld; Jacomyn herself had still been born into slavery, and when the slaves were set free, she became Sofie’s personal maid and she came with her to the Roggeveld voluntarily when Sofie got married. She slept in the kitchen with old Dulsie, or sometimes on the rug before Sofie’s bed, and Mother kept her distance from her, just as she did from Sofie herself, while she, on the other hand, treated us
with aloofness and was usually withdrawn and sullen in our company. Only towards Gert did she show a certain ambivalence, and after her arrival he hung around the kitchen far more often, so that Mother had to chase him away and even Father had to admonish him on occasion. With Jacomyn, a further element of division of which I became increasingly aware during that time was introduced into our already divided little world, for Dulsie reacted to the intruder with immediate animosity, complained endlessly to Mother about her doings, referred to her scornfully as a Slamaaiermeid and maintained she practised magic, while Jacomyn berated her as a Hotnot, and treated her with insolent indifference.

What was the cause of the division in our family, in our home, on our farm – brother against brother, parent against child, master against servant and servants among themselves; whence came the animosity, dissension and spite? We lived together in the same house, shared the same yard, worked together on the same land, met with the same predicaments and faced the same threats and dangers, inescapably dependent upon each other on those barren heights, inextricably connected in our isolation, and nonetheless irrevocably divided, with no hope that the rift would ever be healed. Nine people in the same house and on the same farm, bending over the same task, working together shoulder to shoulder, and yet we never really got to know each other, or made any real effort to get closer, but just brushed past each other in our daily lives, and gradually the abrasions developed into festering wounds. Only in the evenings during family worship did we all come together to unite in the apparent solidarity of a common activity; or at least we gathered in the same room, family members around the large table in the voorhuis and servants to one side in the corner by the kitchen door while Father read aloud from the Bible and led us in prayer. Together – yes, only apparently so, for were
we united even within the walls of that single room? How much did Father understand of that text he followed with his finger, word for word, head inclined towards the candle-flame, those words of admonition or judgement, of love or absolution, trivialised into a mere low-pitched monotone; how much of it did any of us hear, understand, take in? While he was praying I studied the people around me from behind my entwined fingers, my own family around the table in the uncertain light of the candle, Father, Mother, Jakob, Pieter and Sofie, and in the floating, fluid shadows along the wall the vaguer outlines of the servants, Dulsie, Jacomyn and Gert.

Who followed the prayer and submitted to it, except, perhaps, Father himself in his devotion? Wide-eyed I watched them at that moment when they thought they were unobserved, all busy with their own troubles, dreams or ambitions, eyes shut, heads bowed, hands raised, frozen in the routine gestures of supplication and worship, yet with their thoughts far away. From behind the protection of my folded hands I saw the glance wandering absently, the eyes filled with desire, tenderness or malice that for a single unguarded moment rested on another, eyes searching out eyes and for a single unguarded moment finding each other over the bowed heads of the others. What I saw there, I could not name or recognise at the time either, yet I was already aware of something stirring and changing, like the veld when the clouds sweep past swiftly and the landscape of stone and shrub loses its starkness for a moment to drift away in changing patterns of shadow and light. It was just a moment in the uncertain circle of the candlelight, and then the prayer was over, the chairs scraped across the floor, the candles were lit and we withdrew for the night: the family to their rooms, Dulsie and Jacomyn to their beds on the kitchen floor, Pieter to the outside bedroom where he had been sleeping since Jakob’s marriage, and Gert to his sleeping place in the shed or behind
the kraal. The circle of our worship had been broken once more, each got up and turned away from the others, and if you woke during the night, you would hear in the great silence of the house only the heavy breathing of the sleepers. Perhaps someone would cry out in his sleep, groan or sigh, an unintelligible sound in the darkness which you might interpret as you wished if you heard it, and then there would be silence once more, sleeper separated from sleeper in the palpable silence and darkness.

Did winter come early that year, or had our customary departure for the Karoo been delayed for some reason? We left home in cold and billowing mist that cloaked the escarpment, and we descended down Vloksberg Pass into depths we could not see. Our small procession of wagons, riders and sheep flocks descended almost blindly, following the rocky track along the edge of the cliffs, as if we were disappearing into the churning white waters of a drift, never to reappear again. How do I know it was that winter, the winter after Jakob’s marriage; what gives me the right to be so certain? It could just as well have been any other winter of my youth, with the straggling trek moving down the pass to the Karoo while I stayed behind for a moment, my shawl wrapped tightly around me against the cold and wind, watching for a sign that the mist might be opening somewhere, that in our descent we had moved far enough down the mountain to catch a glimpse through an opening in the mist of the Karoo landscape in the golden sunlight down below. The last lagging sheep had already been chased ahead, the last herdsman had disappeared ahead of me down the track, the last sound, that otherwise would have echoed so clearly here in the cliffs, had been muffled by the billowing clouds; for a moment I was alone, and suddenly I was fearful, aware of the baboons on the cliffs and the wild cats in the ravines, aware of every other invisible threat that might be lurking in the fog, and I turned around. My foot caught on a stone
and I heard it roll away and dislodge other stones until the rattle of falling rocks was absorbed by the muffling fog; and I fled, stumbling over the loose stones and rocky ledges, down the slope, following the direction in which the wagons had disappeared, blindly through the fog along the edge of the invisible abyss, until the rear end of our trek became dimly visible ahead of me, the wagons slowly feeling their way through the mist. I can remember no other anxiety from my childhood quite like that unexpected moment during our trek to the Karoo, that first winter after Sofie had come to us as a bride.