This Life (10 page)

Thus the three men rode out with their rifles and, as usual, the women stayed at home and that evening towards sunset, as I was playing outside the house on my own, I looked up, and in the haziness of the late afternoon sun I saw distant riders approaching through that drifting golden light, two riders with three horses, and when they came nearer, I saw that it was Pieter and Gert and that they were leading Jakob’s horse, and I went to call Father.

Let me just tell it as it happened; or, in any case, let me repeat the account that was given, and not try to explain or clarify or understand, for sometimes the very least said is already too much. They hobbled the horses that morning at the top end of Kalantskloof, they said, and Jakob said he would go down the kloof himself while they were to search the adjacent kloofs; and then Pieter and Gert went down Baviaanskloof together and shot a reebok there. The two of them stayed
together, they said, and heard no shots from any other kloof and saw no sign of Jakob, and in the late afternoon, when they returned to the place where they had left the horses, he was not there, neither did he return, though they waited until late. They shouted, they said, and fired their rifles, but heard no answering shot, and so they decided to return home and fetch help before dark. Stuttering slightly, as he sometimes did when he was excited, Pieter told the story to Father where the two of them stood in front of the house with the horses, and at the front door Mother and Sofie were listening. The reebok they had shot lay sideways across Jakob’s horse, its eyes dim and the blood dried around its stiffened jaw.

They all went out to look for Jakob then: messages were sent to the nearest neighbours and, however little contact there may have been, and even though there could be no real question of neighbourliness, not to mention friendship, it went without saying that they would come over to help. The men and the voices and the horses and the flickering light of lanterns or torches in the yard lasted for several days and several nights, I know, for they searched for him in Kalantskloof for days, and they explored all the adjacent kloofs where a man on foot could get lost in the course of a morning, and all the cliffs and ledges from which he might have fallen, the crevices into which he might have disappeared, the hollows where he might have found shelter from the heat of the sun; but every evening they had to return to report that they had found nothing, not even his hat or his rifle. The women came over with their husbands to keep us company, and sat in the voorhuis: the subdued voices, the tales of sickness and sudden death, the bowls of coffee that were served all day long, and the wailing of the sickly child, the white knuckles of Sofie’s hand – but no, why does that image keep returning? It does not belong here where it is constantly intruding. The neighbours helped search for him and found nothing and at last
they had to give up and return to their own tasks, and we remained behind in the silent house, not knowing, or even able to guess what had happened.

For the first few days Father still rode out with them, but now he sent Pieter and Gert back to Kalantskloof to shout and fire their rifles and to explore the kloof, as if he believed it was still possible to find something, and the herdsmen were also instructed to let the sheep graze in the vicinity of Kalantskloof and the adjacent kloofs, so that they could look there for tracks or signs. And so it was a Bushman herdsman who arrived at the house one morning to report that he had been trying to reach a sheep that had slid down into a cleft in the rockface, and among the shrubs and branches blown together there, he had seen the crumpled dark fabric of a man’s jacket. Then Father had the wagon inspanned and rode out to the kloof with Pieter and Gert, and he waited on the wagon – for he was unable to clamber down those cliffs – while Pieter and Gert went to search in the crevice and brought Jakob back. It must have been quite a while after his disappearance, for the body had begun to decompose, but there was no doubt it was he: he had probably lost his footing on the slope, slid down the smooth rockface where he could find no handhold, and been trapped in the narrow cleft where the searchers could not see him in the dark among the shrubs and grass collected there; during his fall his head had struck a rock, so that his skull was shattered and his face hardly recognisable, and his rifle, which the herdsman also found in the crevice later, had snapped and was irreparably damaged, as if he had gripped it more firmly as he fell. They wrapped the body in an oxhide and laid it behind the shed, for they could not bring it inside; it was nearly dark when they arrived here, and Mother and Dulsie took basins of water and clean cloths and tallow candles and went to the shed to wash him and lay him out, but Sofie did not go. How do I
know all this; how do I know it was an oxhide in which they wrapped him? But that is how it was.

The field-cornet came over to examine the body, and then Jakob was buried in the graveyard beyond the ridge, beyond the pear trees. All the neighbours came over again for the funeral – there must have been twenty or thirty people, including the children – and I remember their subdued conversations and how they fell silent when they noticed a member of the family. After the ceremony at the graveside I served bowls of coffee in the voorhuis and, because I was only a child, they did not take much notice of me. It cannot be right for a wife to stand at her husband’s graveside with dry eyes, they remarked deprecatingly, and spoke of Jakob’s fall and what he could have been doing in the kloof where his body was found, so far from the place where he had last been seen. That was when I discovered for the first time how much you could see and hear if you remained silent and withdrew, if you watched and listened and did not allow a single word or gesture to escape you; it was then, as I moved unnoticed among the funeral-goers with the coffee, that, without realising it, I learned how to live the rest of my life. But the carts and wagons were inspanned again and they left, and on Jakob’s grave stones were stacked, with upright stones at the head and foot. We heard nothing more from the field-cornet. I can still picture Sofie among the guests on the day of the funeral, Sofie in the black satin dress in which she was married; but in all that time I did not see her with anything but dry eyes either.

After Jakob’s death it would probably have been possible for Sofie to return to her own people in the Karoo, but she stayed on with us and was treated with greater consideration and acceptance than when he was still alive, for if she left, she would take her child with her. That, I suppose, was how Mother and Father saw it, but I knew more than they, and when I think back now I realise only too well that Jakob’s
child never really concerned her, and her decision to stay was not determined by him, one way or another.

I remember us together in that silent house in our black dresses, Mother and Sofie, Jacomyn with the baby, Dulsie in the kitchen, and I. Now that Jakob was no longer there to help Father, Pieter necessarily had to shoulder a heavier load, and I also remember how sullen and obdurate he often was, so that even Father at times lost patience with his indifference and his carelessness, and in the kitchen where only the servants could hear him, he mentioned that he wanted to leave. “It’s time he got married,” Mother remarked brusquely one day. She was sewing, and bit through the thread as she spoke; the four of us were in the voorhuis together, Father and Mother and Sofie and I, and I can still see that decisive gesture, and Sofie beside me in her black mourning dress. Pieter was no farmer and would never be one, but what other possibilities were there for him? He had a quick tongue and he was smart, he could read and write a little, he could dance well and play the violin, but actually that was all. Somewhere beyond the mountains, somewhere in a world where we never went, and in which we had no part, in the Boland or at the Cape, possibilities may have existed for him, but not here with us.

I forgot that he could play the violin, but now I hear again that plaintive, lilting melody coming from the kitchen where the servants sat in front of the fire in the evenings. I remember Mother glancing up at the sound, frowning, for she probably found it improper so shortly after Jakob’s death, but as far as I know she never mentioned it, and neither did Father; us women in the voorhuis in our black dresses around the single candle burning on the table, with Father who had fallen asleep in his armchair, groaning now and then with the gout, and that doleful music in the kitchen. As I remember, Pieter seldom joined us in the evenings, preferring the company of the servants in
the kitchen or disappearing to his room outside, and during this time I also liked to slip away to the kitchen whenever I could, to the smouldering fire and the idle chatter and gossip of Pieter and the servants, the insinuations I could not understand and the sudden outbursts of pent-up emotion that I found equally incomprehensible, Pieter and Gert – no, it was Jakob and Gert between whom there was ongoing animosity and jealousy, and yet it is Pieter and Gert that I suddenly remember, their hands at each other’s throats, throttling each other, with old Dulsie seated at the hearth, laughing at the spectacle. What happened and who separated them? Jakob or Pieter? Jakob, I say, and yet my memory insists on seeing Pieter there. “Hotnot, take back what you have said!” – “White man, take your hands off me!” They were arguing about a rifle, for Gert had used Pieter’s rifle without permission and Pieter accused him of breaking the cocking-piece, and all evening they sat in the firelight, provoking each other with accusations and reproaches: “Who was the one that broke Jakob’s rifle?” one finally snarled at the other. Jakob’s rifle that Father had bought in Worcester for his confirmation, the rifle that was found snapped and broken where he had fallen on the rock and plunged into the crevice: yes, it was indeed Pieter and Gert who sat talking together that evening in the kitchen, but who spoke the words that set them at each other’s throats, and what did they mean? By that time Jakob was already dead.

Sometimes Sofie still walked in the veld and sometimes Jacomyn went along with the baby; Sofie with the bodice of her black mourning dress unbuttoned so that her pale neck showed. I am mistaken, I am still mistaken, trying to force the wrong splinters together to form a pattern: it was during this time, after Jakob’s death, how else would I remember it like that, with Sofie’s pale skin against the blackness of the mourning attire, and Jacomyn with her face averted from me. “Where is Sofie?” “Never mind, they are coming, they are coming.”
It was not the spring, it was the summer after Jakob’s death that I remember, with Sofie in her black dress, lost in the swells of the shifting shadows over the veld, sinking down into the depths with streaming hair, and vanishing into the dark where only Pieter’s white shirt still flashes for a moment. But the flowers that I remember just as clearly? Summer and spring flow together and one year passes into another, and no certainty remains.

Sofie’s face, veiled by her hair, Pieter’s face upturned for a moment to the surface to catch the light; their expressions are grim and they are not laughing any more, their faces set. That I remember, disjointed, drifting images that cannot be captured between the fingers or linked in any way. The dams flashing in the spring sunlight, the brightness of the veld like a gleaming silver lake, and the silver moonlight in which the wide landscape lies undisturbed. I am confused again and I hesitate, uncertain. What is it that struggles to be released from my memory? Sofie’s face veiled by her long hair in the candlelight, a deeper and more motionless silence and the flame of the candle-stub burning motionlessly in the bowl before it is suddenly extinguished and silver moonlight spills over the floor. Voices in another room, the words inaudible, or perhaps kept low on purpose so as not to be heard.

I do not wish to remember any more

Silence. If only I could sleep, if I could die, but neither is possible: this is dying, but not yet death; I lie awake and waiting in the sleeping house, defenceless against thoughts and memories and the inexorable obligation to report and to remember. Who would ever have thought it possible that I could remember so much, that, unwillingly and under protest, I could recall so much in a single night?

Here, in this room where I am lying now, I also slept as a child; it has been my room all my life, except during the years when I lived in the town house, first with Mother and later on my own; until Maans
built the new house with its wooden floors and fireplaces and wallpaper and we all moved there, Stienie’s house where I never felt at home, not even in my own room. This is my room; strange how it turned out that I was carried from the new house to be brought back here to die. I still remember the heavy silence within the shelter of the thatched roof and the thick walls and the uneven dung floor: over there is the window with its shutter closed against the night, and there the door to the voorhuis; on the other side of this wall Mother and Father are asleep in the big old four-poster, and in the kitchen Dulsie has spread her bedding in front of the hearth. Nothing in this sheltering dark is uncertain, and when I awake during the night, I am aware of that; drowsily I lie for a moment, cherishing the feeling of safety, and then I doze off again quickly and effortlessly. The small, secret night noises are barely discernible, the rustling of a mouse behind a chest, or a bat in the loft, and the call of some nocturnal animal far away in the ridges, the sudden frightened bleating of a lamb caught by a jackal, or a steenbok surprised by a lynx. In the shadows of the ridges the lynx pounces on its prey, and far away in the night a scream has died away even before I can turn over and fall asleep again, the carefree, deep sleep of a child. Are you asleep, Sussie? I do not know any more, scarcely aware of the whispered question, of the rustle of a woman’s dress. A hinge creaks, someone stumbles on the uneven floor, and for a moment nothing stirs – was that what woke me, or was it the flickering of a candle-flame against my eyelids?

It was Sofie’s voice here in my room, but what was she doing here? That it was here, I know for certain, for there was the door to the voorhuis and there the window overlooking the yard and the outbuildings. Sofie untied her hair as if preparing for bed, and the long, dark hair tumbled down around her face like a veil as she bent over the candle to blow it out. Are you asleep, Sussie? The house is quiet: behind the
chests, between the rafters, in the thatch of the roof nothing is astir now; no nocturnal creature is calling on the ridges. I turn over and sink back into sleep.