An Instant in the Wind

by Andre Brink

  We found a battered old cooking pot in the backyard, which Adam has managed to mend, and a piece of grating. The fields are in a sorry state, all overgrown with weeds, but he found a few pumpkins.

  Now we’re staying on, for the time being, although I doubt whether either of us has much hope of anyone turning up. In fact, I’m not sure that it will be of any use if someone did come. Do such people ever go to the Cape? Will I be cared for any better than with him? They may have some clothes, though. There's bound to be a woman in the family.

  But it is a strange, suspended existence. Both of us want to get to the sea now, it must be so close. Yet something retains us here. One waits and waits. We don’t talk much. At night I sleep in front of the open hearth where he's made a fire, although it isn’t cold at all. He sleeps in the other room. We seem to shy away from each other.

  Now I’m sitting here on my own, trying to occupy myself. Today he has gone hunting. He left early in the morning. It is nearly five now and he still hasn’t returned. It's almost like the day E. A. disappeared. I mustn’t think of it, it will drive me mad. If only he returns before dark.

  Earlier this afternoon I went for a walk, not far. As I reached the valley, something awful happened. I heard a noise, dogs barking. For a moment I thought it was the people of the house coming back. Then, on the far side of the valley, a zebra came bursting through the brushwood followed by a whole pack of wild dogs. They swarmed all round him. I could hear him whinny, like a horse. Once he reared up, striking out at them with his front hooves. Then he kicked out with his hind legs. But there were too many of them. He broke into a gallop again. They must have come a long way, for there was foam streaming from his mouth. A couple of them got hold of his flanks and I could see them tearing out strips of flesh. He kept on running. And then they all disappeared over the hill and the sound of the hunt died away.

  He must come back. I tremble if I think of what might have happened. Sometimes it seems to me he's like an animal in flight. If only he comes back. It will be dark soon. Such a long journey ahead for you and me. Oh God, oh God.

  She stands tugging at the frayed collar of her dress. Nowhere in the house could she find any needle or thread; her own was washed away with the load of the ox. She’ll have to tie up the frayed ends, hoping it will not unravel any farther. It's the green dress she originally set aside for her arrival back in the Cape. Now it is all she has left.

  At regular intervals she returns to the front doorstep to look out across the valley where Adam disappeared in the early morning. Perhaps he won’t return. He has been very withdrawn these last few days, as if he felt oppressed indoors. If only she can make up her mind. She knows he is staying on purely for her sake, which is the last thing she desires. Yet she finds it impossible to make a decision, to announce unequivocally: “All right, let's go on.”

  For there is something very final about this stay in the miserable little hut of stone and clay and thatch. If the inhabitants return—as he believes they must, otherwise they wouldn’t have left everything in such good order—she will take leave of him here. It will be the end of the exhausting trek on foot and the even more exhausting process of thinking day after day, the ceaseless need to be on the alert—not so much against him as against herself.

  From the doorstep she looks towards the watery sun drifting on the opposite hills. In the distance four or five hadedas fly past with their death cries; among the karee trees a rain-dove is calling in sweet round notes like drops of water falling. There is no sign of game; they may have been scared off by the presence of people on the farm. This small spot in the wilderness is getting civilized.

  She feels unbearably restless. This small cottage with its two bleak rooms, its uneven walls, its hearth and dung floor, the reeds used to thatch the roof: surrounded by the infinity of veld and trees, hills, valleys. And she here on the threshold, caught between interior and exterior. If she turns round and goes inside, the wide world outside calls her irresistibly; but if she goes out to the yard, she feels the need to return to the protection of walls. The wilderness surrounding the building and the small patch of farmland seems much more threatening than when she formed part of it, with no house or wagon to take refuge in, only the futile shelter of an enclosure of branches at night.

  If he doesn’t return, she will not stay on here. Rather trek into the bush on her own, wandering around until hunger or thirst or animals overcome her.

  Is it this he had in mind when he first came to the wagon? To plunder her, to strip her of everything she had left: and then to abandon her? See how you get out of here, it's the fate you deserve, this is how I avenge me on your Cape.

  But then, surely, he would not have bothered to care for her, to make fire and hunt for food and bring water and ward off wild beasts and warm her with his body in nights of rain and wind?

  She stares across the inhospitable landscape and the endless space touched by desolate wind. Above, the clouds glide past, set alight by the dying sun. But it is so slow, so almost imperceptible that it seems as if the clouds are motionless: it is the earth sailing gently through the wind.

  It terrifies her. She turns back into the darkness of the house, sitting down on a log at the hearth. The fire she made a little while ago is burning warm and reassuringly. Leaning her head against the side wall of the hearth, she tries to imagine the life of the house when there were people in it, the sort of people she and Larsson encountered occasionally on their journey. Men with skin jackets and large hats, sitting at their front doors drinking tea or the Hottentot beer of honey and gli-roots; bloated, bosomy women inside, a grandmother dozing in front of the eternally blazing fire; children swarming over the floor, wearing filthy shirts, their dusty little behinds bare. Chickens pecking mealies from the kitchen floor or brooding in dark corners under hand-made yellow-wood benches. A handful of cattle outside, tended by a scruffy slave; fat-tailed sheep; noisy goats. Fields swarming with birds raiding the mealies and wheat and sun-scorched vineyard.

  Lunchtime: slave women pulling up the backless benches and the few dilapidated chairs (That leg needs mending, says the fanner, it broke under Ma's weight last winter—her hip is still not healed, poor thing, and she's getting so heavy with the water); the family sitting down in strict hierarchy, Pa with his elbows wide apart on the edge of the bare table, pipe in his mouth, hat on his head, teacup beside his left elbow. Samp and pumpkin, sweet-potatoes, sour whole wheat bread soaked in milk, and possibly a piece of wind-dried venison. There is no conversation at table. You brought your knife? Well, use your hands. And here, from the barrel in the corner, brought out specially for the male guests, a tot of husk brandy as proof of hospitality. No one bothers to enquire whether the lady would like some too.

  As evening settles in, the old slave woman brings the water barrel, removes Pa's veld shoes with some difficulty and washes his feet with fat soap, drying them with a rag; then, in the same water, the mother and children have their turns, followed by the guests. Not for me, thank you. The meal, and then Scripture. And after the long prayer, while the slaves are clearing and washing up, the women move to one side—she with them—whispering beside the hearth about female ailments and children with croup, sweet pumpkin pie and the excellence of buchu brandy, the unreliability of servants. The men remain beside the table, with sopies and tobacco, commenting boisterously on sheep and cattle, on how you chased the Bushman down with your horse, on locusts and worms, or how you kicked the bloody Hottentot in the balls, and on the hidden meanings of Revelations.

  Sleep well. The slaves bed down in the kitchen, the family snugly together in the bedroom on brass bedstead and spare mattresses; the guests are invited to share their room. But if you prefer the wagon, do feel free. Make yourself at home, and don’t be shy to ask if you need anything. Oh sorry, the missus is here, too: good night.

  My people.

  Elisabeth gets up again, with sudden claustrophobia, returning to the front door. No sign of Adam yet. The sun is down; the bird
s still chattering sleepily. The world has grown enormous, limitless.

  He won’t return any more.

  Perhaps it's better like this. Why should I allow myself to get trapped in you? It isn’t dignified. I’ve fought myself free. I’ve liberated myself from everything—the Cape, and Erik Alexis Larsson, and my people; my own child; from past and future. I dare not ensnare myself again. For that is what it means. Have you thought something else was possible?—to touch someone and not let go again? But you forgot one thing: we are still human. And so we remain scared, and petty, and treacherous. Look, you have abandoned me.

  She wants to return inside, but cannot. The brooding dusk oppresses her, the heavy smell of departed people is nauseating. In near-despair she looks out.

  And there she sees him coming back, far away among the trees, carrying a buck on his shoulders.

  She wants to cry. But she laughs. Picking up her dress to her knees, she begins to run.

  “Adam!” she shouts. “Adam!”

  “What's the matter?” he asks when she reaches him out of breath.

  “I’ve been so frightened,” she pants, ashamed now that he is back.

  “Did anything happen?” he asks.

  She shakes her head, her plaits swinging over her shoulders. “No. It was just… You stayed away so long. I thought…”

  “You were afraid I wouldn’t come back? You were afraid of what would happen to you?” She hears the urgent accusation in his voice.

  “No,” she says. “I didn’t even think of that. I was afraid…” She stops. She dare not say it. But she can no longer suppress it. “I was afraid for you. In case something happened. In case you hurt yourself.”

  I’m all right.” He begins to walk on, beside her. It is getting much darker now. They reach the yard. At the doorstep he shrugs off the buck. There is blood on his shoulders. “I had to go a long way to find something,” he says.

  “As long as you’re back.”

  He squats down, takes his knife from his belt and starts skinning the buck.

  She watches him for a while, then goes inside and returns with warm water in the pot he mended.

  “You want to wash?” she asks.

  “It's been a long day,” he says suddenly.

  “It's been endless. You must be very tired.”

  “That's nothing.” He gets up, looking at her intently, standing in front of her. She still has the pot of water in her hands. “It's all the thinking,” he says.

  “What have you been thinking then?”

  “When I left here this morning I’d decided not to come back. I meant to go away.”

  “I know,” she says, trying to read his face in the dark. “Why did you come back then?”

  “You brought me back.”

  “We mustn’t stay here,” she says with sudden conviction. “Tomorrow morning we must go on, to the sea. It isn’t good to stay here.”

  “If you really think so.”

  “I do,” she says, quiet and frank. “I’ve also been thinking all day.”

  She puts down the pot. For a moment she is still unsure. He is waiting for her to move. She tears the lace cuff from one of the sleeves of her Cape dress, soaks it in the warm water and begins to wash him. First his soiled shoulders. He stands motionless, allowing her to have her way with him.

  Nothing is stirring any more; the birds in the trees are hushed. It's dark. Only inside the house there is a faint, reddish flickering from the fire in the hearth.

  When she has finished, she drops the crumpled rag back in the water.

  She looks up at him, quite quiet.

  “Take off your clothes,” he says.

  She breathes through half-opened lips, relieved of all fear, and experiencing only the strange serenity, not of submission but of acquiescence.

  “Adam?” she whispers.

  She wants to ask: Who are you?

  But one must be able to walk into the night. Not a question of imagination, but of faith.

  “I want you naked,” says his voice in the dark.

  WORLD PROVISIONALLY WITHOUT END. Beyond the undulating veld of heather and heath, and the brushwood of erica and protea, begins the virgin forest: beechwood and elder trees and els, redwood and black-wood, green-grey with hoary moss and ivy and strung with lianas; patriarchal yellow-wood and stinkwood trees, older than Christ.

  The open veld is scarred by deep ravines reaching down to streams with long quiet pools and foaming rapids, kloofs so narrow and so deep, so densely overgrown, that from below you never see the sun.

  The ravines run down to the sea where the continent ends abruptly. Overland, too, one reaches the coast, suddenly finding oneself on the edge of a dark red precipice stained yellow and green with lichen, decayed into grotesque patterns shaped by wind and water, pockmarked by caves; down to a primeval chaos of rocks and protruding tree-roots, and, in between, small crescents of beaches, sand or shingle.

  Sound: the deep thundering of the waves against the resplendent rock of the cliffs; the slushing of water through sluices and gullies and tidal caves; the barking of baboons high up on the cliff side among the trees; the piercing scream of a fishing eagle; the screeching of gulls.

  Movement: the primitive simplicity of the sea, wave upon wave, tide after tide, as reassuring as breathing. Tree-tops swaying slowly in the wind. On the wet sand the eager uneven crawling of shells scuttling back to the water; on the rocks the darting of rock-rabbits; above, the gliding and tumbling of gulls in the wind.

  They are walking along their small white beach, on the edge of the low tide, directly above the scalloped line of foam, both naked. Rolled up in their cave, unused for the time being, lies her green dress. Her body is brownish in the generous glow of the late summer sun, still a paler brown than his, with her dark brown hair loose over her shoulders; and the pink of her nipples gently brown against the ochre-brown of her small breasts. She swerves away from him, into the shallow water, splashing him; he dashes after her, but she manages to escape. He follows her. With her long legs she runs away from him, but he soon catches up and grabs her waist and swings her round; they tumble down in the sand, rolling, thrashing, laughing, until the low waves begin to break over them, forcing them to jump up, startled, helpless with laughter; children.

  “I’m thirsty,” she pants, pushing her wet, salty hair from her eyes.

  “Shall we go to the pool?”

  It lies on the far side of the rock formation closing off the small bay. Above the broad, foaming river mouth is a quiet pool surrounded by rocks and overgrown with ferns and cycads and moss; sometimes, if one keeps very still, there is a red and green flickering of a lourie in the foliage.

  The pool is chilly, yet warmer than the sea. She lies down at the edge to drink, then rolls over on her back, looking up at him.

  “You’re all covered with sand.”

  Meticulously, caressingly, she begins to wash him while he stands smiling; a restrained ritual of love; clasping his erection gently in both hands before she goes on. And then it is his turn to wash her clean of sand and salt, unashamedly beautiful.

  As he reaches out to help her back over the rocks, a snake suddenly comes gliding past them, swiftly, soundlessly, straight across her foot, a smooth and stunning green. In a lightning reflex he jerks her out of the way, and when she recovers her balance he already stands poised with a stone in his hand. The next moment the broad flat head splits open, crushed and red with blood, the forked tongue flickering its last. Fascinated they stare at the lithe green body coiling and writhing before it stops with a final long shudder rippling from head to tail, its bright green strangely dulled.

  “You shouldn’t have killed it,” she says. “It was so lovely.”

  “And if it bit you?”

  “It was on its way into the bush.”

  “A snake is a snake.”

  Subdued, they resume their climb over the rocks, back to their beach. As they reach the sand, she stops, pointing.

  “Look.�
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  “What?”

  “The way we came: don’t you see?”

  He looks across the beach.

  “No, I don’t see anything.”

  “That's what I mean.” While they have been at the pool, the tide has turned, foaming in over their footprints, obliterating them. “It is as if we’ve never been here.”

  “Perhaps we haven’t,” he says, teasingly.

  “Sometimes I wonder whether I’m dreaming you.” She is more serious. “And even myself. It's all so impossible, so beautiful. Everything is so remote.”

  “Come,” he says. “It's time for me to fasten my nets.”

  Knotted from lianas and vines and monkey-ropes, and tied with tough rushes, the nets are spread out on the sand to dry.

  “I’ll go and find some fruit,” she offers.

  “Not poison-apples again!”

  “No,” she says guiltily. “I’ll be more careful today.”

  He gives her a playful slap on the behind and stands looking after her as she walks away, brown and bare.

  “Savage!” he calls out softly.

  She hears it and, laughing, picks up a handful of sand and throws it at him; then runs off. He wades into the shallow water to a line of rocks deeper in the sea: even at high tide they remain above water, a jagged kraal enclosing exquisite sea-gardens and, in the center, a small oval of fine white sand. But he has to push on now, for if the sea rises much higher, he’ll have to wait out there until it ebbs again.

  Returning an hour later, carrying one of their roughly woven baskets filled with fruit, she finds him sleeping on the beach in the late sunlight; so still, that at first she's startled, thinking that something must have happened to him. But coming nearer she notices the even breathing motion of his chest, and, once, a slight twitching of his legs.

  She kneels beside him, leaving the basket on the sand. He is lying on his side in the fine sand above the highest foam-ridge of the tide, the slack fingers of one hand still lightly clutching a shell.

  The intimate landscape of happiness. The ultimately inexplicable quality of it. Everything permissible; everything possible.