This Life (9 page)

It snowed – after our return that spring it was still snowing, I remember now, and in the voorhuis we sat around the fire-pan together. What else? And Pieter then, walking towards me across that
glittering expanse, across all the years between? We had been waiting, and in the early morning Pieter came walking towards us across the glittering snowfield with the jackal-skin kaross around his shoulders; but no, not like that. What had we been waiting for in silence, and where did he come from when he returned to us, the time I recall now? Let me try to remember.

Spring was late, and after our return from the Karoo it remained cold for a long time, and it snowed heavily at least once, that is how it was. I see us women around the fire-pan in the voorhuis, and carefully I feel my way, afraid to move too fast or to disturb, by a thoughtless movement, the delicate fretwork of the memory, for there is something here that is important. We are sitting in a small, silent circle, but it is not the customary closeness of cold evenings, for only the women are together, and I am aware of tension and distress, of the coming and going of men in the kitchen and someone stamping his feet on the clay floor of the kitchen to shake the snow from his shoes. On a low stool in our circle sits Jacomyn with the baby on her lap, and the child is crying plaintively, so that she rocks him to and fro to soothe him, but Sofie pays no attention to his whining. Sofie sits very straight in her chair, and where I sit beside her, pressed up against her as is my habit, I can see the white knuckles of the hand clutching the shawl around her shoulders. And that was how it was. And now – where to now? I hesitate for a moment, and then, suddenly, I know.

When the weather came up, Father sent Pieter to help bring a flock of sheep that had been grazing near the edge of the mountain to the kraal, and before he could return, it began to snow, so heavily that it was impossible to go out to help the herdsman and him. Later that night, when the snowfall was over, a big fire was lit on the ridge behind the house to serve as a beacon in the dark, and the following day Father and Jakob and Gert went out to search for them; but though nothing
was said, I do not believe anyone expected them to have survived the heavy snowfall on the exposed mountainside. So the morning passed with us waiting for news at home, and later I was standing in the doorway, gazing out over the glittering white world stretching away, so that it was I who saw the man in the distance walking towards the house across the snow, and across the distance and with eyes blinded by the reflected light I recognised Pieter and called out, and the women came running from the house. They had been trapped by the snowstorm on the edge of the escarpment when they had only just begun herding the sheep together, so that they were forced to take shelter in a hollow under an overhanging cliff, where they spent the night: at first light Pieter made his way through the heavy snow on the slopes to let us at home know that they were still alive, while the herdsman stayed behind to search for the scattered sheep. It was a long time before they could herd together the survivors from the crevices and caves into which they had fled before the storm and where they could sometimes be trapped for days before the snow began to melt.

Thus Pieter survived and returned to us, and I remember a rare celebration in which we all took part, even in that divided household, for as I have said, while our jealousy, spite and resentment forced us apart, in our isolation we were always driven together again by the struggle for survival in that harsh world where we were inescapably dependent on each other’s help to face the dangers and hardships of daily life, like the white man and the Bushman, the master’s son and the servant, who survived the long dark of the winter’s night together in their shelter, at last to see daylight again. I remember Father pouring sweet wine at the table that evening of Pieter’s return and even I was allowed a mouthful. However, even here, in this festive moment, with the family gathered around the table, discord and unity were intertwined. What malicious remark did Jakob make about the wine poured
for Pieter in such an unaccustomed way? That I do not remember any more, only Father’s answer: “For this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.” Jakob was about to reply, his face dark in the candlelight, but at that moment we heard a rustling sound and Sofie came to us from the shadows of her room, dressed in the rustling black wedding gown that she had put on as if it were truly a celebration we were partaking in here. I still remember that, whatever else I may have forgotten or may have tried to forget, the silence at the table as she took her place among us, Father pushing her glass of wine across the table and Mother, after a moment’s silence, remarking in an undertone, “We do not dress up like that here,” as if it were a reproach. I remember Sofie in her black dress, her eyes glittering, and Jakob’s dark face as he sat reluctantly sipping his wine, and the single candle next to Father’s chair that left most of the large room in darkness. The chair overturns, the chair is knocked over, the candle-flame flares fiercely as if the wind has suddenly blown open the shutters, and the candle topples and falls over the edge of the table, its faint glow extinguished. On our knees in the dark we feel around on the floor, we stumble over the table and chairs now unfamiliar to us, we search in the dark for the tinder-box, and call to Dulsie in the kitchen to bring a glowing ember from the fire to illuminate the sudden and complete darkness – that evening or some other evening, or perhaps never. I can only tell what I remember.

That year spring did not bring the abundant flowers of the previous season, even though the spekbos stood white along the ridges. The sky softened and the light brightened and the landscape fleetingly took on a green radiance, but in hidden places along the escarpment, in crevices and rocky outcrops, patches of snow remained until late.

With the arrival of warmer days Sofie resumed her walks in the
veld, and she often took Jacomyn and the baby along; Mother and Dulsie had much to say about these walks, and about the child being taken outdoors like that, but as far as I know no one tried to forbid it. Sometimes she would ask me along too and, if I had no work to do, Mother silently and disapprovingly allowed me to go. I can still see our little group on that grey expanse, Jacomyn with the baby in her arms, and the wind of the escarpment plucking at the women’s frocks and at Sofie’s hair; I see Sofie with hair billowing around her head, laughing and clapping her hands, suddenly appearing as young and as carefree as a child again.

The landscape surges in patterns of light and shade as the wind comes rolling over the ridges, and Sofie and Pieter laugh and call out to each other in words blown away by the wind – yes, Pieter, for Pieter was there too; how clearly I remember that. I am sitting on the ground beside Jacomyn, watching the baby asleep on the shawl she has spread out for him. “Where is Sofie?” I ask. “Never mind,” she answers distractedly, without raising her eyes. “Never mind, they are coming, they are coming.” I smell the air around us, sweet with the scent of wilde anys, and I notice the shrubs that have taken root in the clefts and the swaying white blooms of the spekbos on the ridges, that pale spring of grey and silver and white under a faded blue sky, with the water in the distant vlei glittering for a moment before growing dull once more as the entire landscape darkens under the billowing shadows that obscure the sun. That spring – yes, it was during that spring, the second spring, when Maans had already been born; I was mistaken. They are coming, they are coming. The wind shakes the branches of the renosterbos, the harpuisbos and the white blooms of the spekbos, and I get bored where I sit waiting with Jacomyn. For whom, for what? I have forgotten, for years I forgot, but now I am slowly beginning to remember again. They are coming. Pieter, my brother, in his
shirtsleeves, laughing among the shrubs and bushes of the veld, and Sofie, laughing, her hair billowing around her head – it was during that spring that I saw them running through the drifting, rolling landscape, stumbling along the treacherous shadows, stumbling, falling and disappearing under the dark surface of the shadows. Did he come with us? But that is unlikely. Did he meet up with us somewhere, was he waiting for us; could it have been prearranged, and if so, how and where and when? They are coming, they are coming, Jacomyn says quietly, her head averted as she plays with pebbles and gravel where she sits waiting, and the air is sweet with the scent of wilde anys. There is so much I have forgotten, only to remember again now, to try and understand, so much I will never remember any more, so much I will never understand.

I jump up, I stumble through bushes and trip over rough, gnarled trunks, scraping my knees on rocks, shouting into the wind, groping, lost among the thickets and clefts of the dried-up fountains. Perhaps it is better not to remember it all, perhaps we are unable to endure the full burden of our memories. They slip, they slide and are lost to me. Under the ripples of shifting light and shadow they disappear, a bright wall of water separating them from me; uncomprehending, I stare down from the edge and see Sofie with her face upturned and her hair floating wide as she sinks down, see the brightness of Pieter’s white shirt in the intensifying darkness as he sinks down with arms outstretched to where my eye can no longer follow them. Their bodies, now weightless, are carried by the water into the depths, borne along the invisible stream. For a moment they turn towards each other in the swell – the pale faces with dilated eyes, the streaming hair, the outstretched arms; the surging water forces them together as in an embrace, as if in search of rescue, before they disappear together and, screaming, I jump up in my bed and recognise by the dim glow of the
oil lamp my familiar room with the shutters closed against the night and Dulsie who has fallen asleep on the rug beside the bed where she is watching over me.

It is quiet, no sound can be heard in the emptiness of the night. Silence, darkness; wait for the cocks to start crowing in the dark, wait for the first greyness to become visible through the shutters, for the girl to wake up and stir and feel around to light the candle. Nothing.

That summer – I remember nothing; silence and darkness. The eagle’s feather in the sky, the vulture’s feather, the feather motionless in the sky. The jackal on the ridge, the wild cats emerging from the rocky clefts at night to attack the sheep flocks. The whitened bones of some animal on the rocks in the narrow ravine, or the sudden brightness of blood on a rock. Who heard the cry?

What more? I do not remember anything more about that summer, it is dark before my eyes, silence is all around me after the stream of memories that has engulfed me. The shot echoing among the cliffs, startling the chattering baboons, thundering back and forth among the cliffs, just about to die away when the boom of another rifle from an adjacent kloof starts up the echoes anew. In the house the women jump up from where they are sitting in the voorhuis and run outside, and I see the white knuckles of Sofie’s hand. But no, that was another time, and the hunters firing their rifles miles away in the kloof were out of earshot. There had been no shot anyway, it was that he had lost his footing, his foot on the rock, his head against the rock. I cannot remember any more; I do not know any more. I do not want to remember any more.

Wait; wait without thinking or forcing, hear the silence without listening, and stare wide-eyed into the dark. The night will pass; perhaps the night will pass without the need to remember. Wait.

Sofie’s hand, the knuckles white; Sofie raising her hand to touch the blood on her face; Sofie, her long hair screening her face from the candlelight. Did he strike her? How do I know this, and was there no one to intervene?

Do not try to remember. What do I know? Simple facts that may be accounted for simply, without trying to establish pattern, meaning or coherence, without searching for more, but even that is too much.

She was not happy with us or with Jakob, of course not, but how much did I ever really know about that, except for the chair overturning, the door being slammed or the angry voices in the other room, and who can say whether these things concerned Sofie and Jakob? I can still picture Sofie clearly with the blood on her face, but is it memory or imagination? The fields of spring flowers I remember, but there were many springtimes, and can I still distinguish between one year and another? That they fell, stumbled and sank down into the dark water, of course I never saw anything of the sort, but how can I distinguish between memory and imagination when one image is as clear to me as the other? Simple facts are no longer simple; every word, every image is loaded with further memories or deeper insights from which they can no longer be disentangled. If I have to remember then, if I am forced to give this account, where should I begin, and what should I mention, what omit? But I must begin.

Summer came and the land regained its usual greyness, the sunlight was brighter; of that summer I remember heat and dust, and in the vlei the clear water surrounded by reeds and bulrushes began to dwindle, leaving at first a ring of mud, trampled by the sheep that came to drink there, then drying up, gradually cracking and crumbling. It might have been any other summer, but I remember it because Sofie’s baby was still very young and his whining forms part of my memories:
the plaintive wailing of the sickly child, and Jacomyn’s voice in the bedroom, hushing him, and the sound of her bare feet on the dung floor as she paced up and down. That year the lynxes were troublesome in the gorges, and one of the herdsmen brought a dead lamb that had fallen prey to one of them to the house to show Father, and then Father told Jakob and Pieter and Gert to take their rifles and go and shoot the creature, for his health was showing signs of failing, and he began to leave most of the work on the farm up to Jakob. They rode out that morning before daybreak, before I was up, and Father stayed at home. The sewing and the shiny needle in my hand, the wailing of the baby and the shuffling of Jacomyn’s feet, and the white knuckles of Sofie’s hand – but no, that was the winter when Pieter came walking back to the house alone across the snowfield, back from the dead. I am confused, and if my memory can deceive me like this, how can I trust it? Better to remain silent and wait, for the cock to crow, for daybreak. But I must remember.