This Life (7 page)

In the little school that Sofie had attended at Worcester, she had learnt different kinds of needlework and embroidery, and I think Mother expected her to teach me now as well, but Sofie was not really interested, nor did she have the patience, and even Mother had to acknowledge my awkwardness with the needle, so that nothing ever came of the plan. She had also had some piano instruction, but who had a piano in those parts, and so that, too, was of no use, though sometimes when she was busy on her own she sang some of the songs she had learned at school.

Thus all that remained of her education was the few books she had brought along in her trunk and sometimes took out to read, seated against the wall near the window because of the poor light. When she saw I was interested in her books and could even read from them a little, she laughed and asked who had taught me: “Pieter,” I answered timidly, for even to Sofie I did not want to speak of Meester, and in a way it was true, after all, for Pieter had helped me too. After that, Sofie began to read with me from her books and, though Mother regarded the books with suspicion and did not approve of Sofie’s reading, so that she was quick to interrupt it with some instruction or other, she did realise that it was useful, and so my occasional lessons with Sofie
began. In usefulness I myself was not interested, but to be involved with her in this activity, shoulder to shoulder and heads bowed over the pages together in the feeble light, that was good for me and, anyway, the books she had brought along were story books that I could understand better and enjoy more than those I had read with Meester. Later she also gave me writing lessons: there must have been a lot she did not know, though she did know a little Dutch and a little English, but nevertheless her knowledge was greater than mine and she helped me as far as she could. In the monotony and isolation of her life with us, the lessons must have seemed a welcome respite to her, even almost like a little game with a girl only a few years her junior: I can remember that there was sometimes a great deal of laughter where we sat together with our heads bowed over the pages. It often happened then that Pieter would be attracted by our high spirits too and, in spite of his duties on the farm, he would manage to be somewhere in the vicinity when I had my lessons and he would be drawn in until Mother discovered him inside the house.

It was after we had returned from the Karoo that these lessons in the dimly-lit voorhuis began, during Sofie’s first spring with us: the slate-grey land had regained some colour in the warmth of the sun, the dams in the marshlands glittered in the sunlight and the rocky ridges were fleetingly suffused with the brightness of flowers. The remoteness, the distance, the sunlight and the glittering of the water beckoned to us all day where we were busy inside the house, visible in fragments through the small windows set deep in the walls, and sometimes when Mother was not near to see it and forbid it, Sofie would call Jacomyn and pull me along by the hand, and then we would leave the books or the sewing and slip out into the sunshine of the day. Far off in the distance I can still see us in the wideness of that spring landscape, the two women, the glitter of the water behind them, and
Sofie unbuttoning her bodice in the heat, laughing and breathless, and Jacomyn, her headscarf tied around the wild flowers we had picked, her dark hair gleaming in the sun. Sofie and I together at one end of the table in the voorhuis where I was busy with my writing exercises, the front door left ajar to let in the light and the brightness of the landscape outside, with Pieter facing us, sprawled lazily, elbows on the table, teasing, or trying to distract us, cutting a quill pen and passing it to Sofie across the table. The water glitters in the sun and for a moment my eyes, accustomed to the dark house, are dazzled. Never had I experienced a spring as beautiful as that one, I must admit here at the end of my life, that spring before Maans was born.

Of the books Sofie and I read together like that, I understood very little at first, but Pieter borrowed them from her, and it was a secret between the three of us that had to be kept from Mother. She never caught him reading, for she would have taken the book from him and she might even have given him a thrashing, grown-up as he was, but she did know about it, just as she knew about everything else. “He’s lying about somewhere outside again, reading,” she exploded towards Father when some or other chore had been neglected or overlooked, and the words were also a reproach aimed at Sofie whom she never accused directly. “You must speak, husband, you must speak!” she cried out with her usual vehemence, but Father just smiled and stroked his beard defensively as was his habit. When the two boys got into an argument, Jakob sneered at Pieter’s book-learning and his preference for the women’s company, but Pieter only retreated into an unwonted silence and made no reply.

Sofie and Pieter and I at the voorhuis table, Pieter’s blonde head bent over the quill pen he was carving for her; Pieter handing it across the table, and Sofie reaching out her hand to take it from him, while I glanced up from my seat beside her and noticed it: a gesture like so
many others among people who live in the same house and share the same life, passing the knife, the bowl, the leather thong, the candle, and accepting it without a further thought. Why then do I remember the passing of the pen rather than that of knife or bowl, candlestick or thong? Outside the dams were blinding in the sun, for the fountains were running strongly after the winter’s snowfall and the pools were full; among the bulrushes and the reeds the water caught the light and the hollows were sodden. Sometimes Sofie and Jacomyn would disappear together and leave me alone inside the house with Mother and her silent but unmistakable disapproval, and only at dusk would they return. Or was there only that one occasion, that evening when they arrived home agitated and afraid after the candle had already been lit in the voorhuis? They had gone for a walk to pick flowers and some children had thrown stones at them – was that the way it happened? I must have been half-asleep by that time and I only remember the agitated voices; they must have stumbled on the shelter of one of our herdsman families in some remote part, and the children they came upon were unused to strangers, or took fright at the white woman, and threw stones at them. I remember how angry and upset Mother was and how furious Jakob became, while Father tried to soothe and appease. Were they raging at the children, or was it Sofie who had infuriated them with her irresponsible behaviour? I still remember Jakob’s dark face and how he struck the table with his fist and threatened to chase the people at Bastersfontein away once and for all so that they would never return; but is that really the way it happened, was it Bastersfontein he mentioned that evening in the candlelight, or are there other memories that have become entwined with what I recall of that evening? Was that the evening when the chair fell over and the door was slammed shut? Out of cobwebs and shadows my imagination weaves illusions in an attempt to find something I can understand.
Dimly, dimly, across the years, through the dreams, through the drowsiness of the child who once heard it all through a haze of sleep I remember the clamour of the angry voices by candlelight, the chair, the door; I remember the thatched roof collapsed over the walls of the house and the dried-up fountain where no mud retained a print any more.

How rich the Roggeveld always was for a few weeks after the end of winter, when the wild flowers appeared in the bright light and cold wind of the tentative spring, the only wealth that meagre land ever knew. I remember the spekbos radiant-white like a snowfall along the rocky ridges, large patches of yellow katstert, blazing like candles, and the fields of kraaitulpe like fire, the gous-blomme and botterblomme and perdeuintjies, and when the scattered clouds swept past the sun, the entire bright veld creased and furrowed like water, and the people moving across it were like swimmers on the surface of a dam, rolling on the waves of shadow and light. As the women approached, laughing, their hands filled with flowers, their feet were tangled in the shadows; Pieter stumbles as he runs towards us and for a moment he is carried forward by the surge, his golden hair gleaming in the sun. How did Pieter manage to extricate himself from his work and slip away to come with us? Laughing, he reaches out with his hands to break his fall, laughing, he struggles against the swell and for a moment remains afloat on the heaving surface where he is caught by the sunlight, and then the dark water washes over him and obscures him from my view. The women’s voices waft away on the wind so that I can no longer hear Sofie and Jacomyn calling my name; I start, and see Sofie standing before me, her dress flapping in the wind, and the flowers she has picked fall from the careless posy she holds out to me and are blown away by the wind. Impatiently she presses the flowers into my hand and turns around, turns away from me, and disappears into the
tide of sliding, shifting shadows and light; laughing, she runs after Pieter, while Jacomyn remains standing beside me, following them with her eyes.

It was during the spring after Sofie’s arrival, that spring and summer, I presume, because I am bewildered by the succession of bright days and I can no longer distinguish one from another; but that summer she was already pregnant with Maans and everything was different, not only because the birth of the child would determine the date of our usual departure for the Karoo or because Sofie was more often indisposed as her pregnancy progressed, but because of the high expectations the birth of Jakob’s son raised in Mother, so that Sofie was treated with a newfound attentiveness and consideration, and the pregnancy and approaching confinement were increasingly allowed to influence even the most important arrangements and routines of our daily lives. This was the child of the eldest son, the first grandchild and the future heir, and from the way Mother was preparing for his birth, I must conclude as I look back now that she had begun to amass his inheritance much earlier, even though the process was evident only occasionally, as with Bastersfontein and Kliprug.

That summer Sofie was pregnant, and when I think of that summer my first memory is of Jakob and Pieter and Gert harvesting corn in our field, and of Pieter’s pale body as he stood on the wagon, laughing in the sunshine. By this time Sofie was walking with difficulty and had to lean on me over the uneven surface of the track; yes, now I remember how it was, and it becomes clear again how those memories fit together. Gert had come back home to fetch the wagon, and Sofie came running to where I was busy in the voorhuis. “Come, Sussie, let’s go along to the corn-field!” she whispered as if it were a secret that no one else should know, and we slipped out through the kitchen
and disappeared around the corner of the outside room quickly before anyone could see us from the house. We followed behind the wagon, trying to catch up with it, Sofie’s hand on my shoulder as she leaned on me heavily over the uneven rocky track across the veld; but though she moved with difficulty and was soon out of breath, she was laughing like a child, driven by an excitement which swept me along though I did not understand. Laughing and out of breath, we caught up with the wagon and climbed aboard, and so we reached the cornfield where Jakob and Pieter were harvesting together. To me it was just an adventure and it was only when we arrived there that I realised from Jakob’s outburst how much I did not understand yet. What was the reason for his anger? Sixty years later I still cannot understand it. Jakob had never shown any consideration, neither had he ever been particularly attentive to Sofie as far as I can remember; could it have been Mother’s disapproval and reprimand he feared, or did he in some way not quite clear even to himself sense that his authority as Sofie’s husband was at risk, did he already begin to sense he was losing her and she was slipping away from him in the golden haze of candle-light and dust, into the dark depths of the shadowy water? Jakob had always been a strange man with his silences and his outbursts, and who could say what was hidden behind them? To this day I struggle to find an explanation or an answer, so what can one expect from the child in the cornfield sixty years ago? Mystified, I knelt on the ground and watched them as they stood there, Jakob and Sofie and Pieter, in the summer sun in the field where the sheaves were stacked, and I realised they were grown-ups whose lives I did not understand: I remember the heat and the silence and Jakob’s fury, and how the tap of the water barrel beside me was dripping and had formed a moist, dark patch in the soil. I poured a little water into a bowl to drink and to splash on my burning face, and then Sofie sat down beside me on the ground and I poured her some
water too, while the men began to stack the sheaves on the wagon, Jakob and Gert handing them to Pieter, who stood on the wagon, so that the load was stacked higher and higher until they had to throw the sheaves up to him with pitchforks.

I knelt next to the water barrel and watched their shirts turn dark with perspiration, and Jakob’s muscles bunch together as he continued rhythmically and relentlessly in order to finish and reach home before sunset, as if his irrational passion and fury had been translated into labour, while the other two men strained to keep up without showing that they were tiring. And when the last sheaves had been thrown aloft, Pieter took off his shirt as he stood above them on the wagon and wiped his face with it, and I remember his lean, slender body and how he stood there on the stacked sheaves, laughing and taunting the other two, Pieter with his quick tongue and his banter, and Jakob with his relentless silence: how clearly I remember my two brothers as they stood there in the cornfield. And Sofie, where was she? I do not see her, I cannot remember her; I can only presume she was still sitting there beside me on the ground and, like me, was watching Pieter on the wagon and Jakob down below. All I remember is her voice reaching me, without being able to say where it came from. “Come, Sussie,” she said, “let’s go”, and when I looked up, she was already walking away from us across the veld, so that I had to run after her. As we were leaving, we heard Jakob call after us, and after a while Pieter also began to shout at us to come back and ride home on the wagon, but Sofie gave no sign of hearing them, neither did Jakob make any attempt to follow us. We walked straight across the veld in the direction of the house, while the men on the wagon had to follow the track, and arrived only after us, but it was a long way for us to walk, and over the last stretch Sofie began to lean more heavily on my shoulder again.