An Instant in the Wind

by Andre Brink

  Going to the mouth of the cave she pulls the skins aside to look out. A flurry of delicate moist flakes caresses her face.

  “For how long does the winter last in these mountains?” she asks, returning, shivering, to the fire.

  “Most years there isn’t snow at all.” He brings her food to her. “We’ll just have to sit it out. At least we’re sheltered here.”

  And, really, it is better being here than in their first cave by the sea. They may feel cornered and irritated, and the days are long and tedious, the nights endless, and she's developed a nasty cough: but still there is the reassurance of knowing that they’re on their way, that this is a mere resting-place in transit. One day the weather will clear up and they will trek on. They’re not trying to deceive one another any more by pretending it's permanent: they’re only hibernating, nothing more. They live in touch with past and future, no longer trying to deny it.

  Soon after supper she snuggles in under their sleeping-kaross beside the fire. He brings her a concoction of ghaukum leaves picked far below the snowline that afternoon. And listening to the rasping sound of her coughing he busies himself with knife and stones, fire and water, fashioning arrowheads from bone and quartz, and attaching these to assegai-wood shafts. The barbed points are dipped in a mixture of pulped roots and the poison-bag of a half-frozen snake he found on the hillside. It is more than preparation for the future: it is also something to ward off boredom and cold, something to occupy his mind when he feels worried about her illness. She has grown very thin indeed; when he holds her body against his beside the fire she is a deathly white: he can feel her ribs under the smooth skin, the hard protuberances of shoulder-blades and hip-bones; only her cunt is soft and open, like a wound.

  In the pre-dawn darkness they are awakened by an unfamiliar sound: the skins flapping and folding in the mouth of the cave, and a body stumbling past them. She utters a muffled moan against his throat, pressing herself against him. Instinctively he rolls in front of her to shield her with his body, in the same movement grabbing a piece of wood and hurling it on the dying coals; by the time the flames begin to spring up, he is ready, the pistol in his hands.

  It's only a little buck, wide-eyed against the back wall, shaking with cold and obviously scared to death. Something must have driven it in here—a leopard, or the violence of the wind. On shivering legs it stares at them, aiming this way and that, cornered by the fire blazing between the cave mouth and itself.

  Elisabeth laughs with relief, a sob in her throat; momentarily shocked back to a late afternoon in a river, and a small doe seeing her naked.

  “The poor little thing has just come in for shelter,” she says. “Let's go to sleep again.”

  He continues to watch their visitor for some time before, reluctantly, he crawls back under the kaross. She is coughing again; and it is already beginning to grow light before she falls asleep once more, quite exhausted. Long before her he wakes up.

  The little buck is still there, although the coals have died down long ago. Its eyes still wide open, it lies against the back wall, and the moment Adam stirs it is back on its feet.

  He looks round to Elisabeth. She is still sleeping. Without a sound he picks up his assegai and starts shuffling towards the little animal in the back of the cave. It is very quiet outside, the snow smothering all sound in the mountains. Inside nothing stirs, there is only the whisper of Elisabeth's breathing. He goes nearer. The buck is too terrified to move. With a sudden final lurch Adam dives it to the ground, grabbing the prickly horns with one hand, forcing the head backwards to expose the throat to his blade.

  A single anxious bleating cry.

  “Adam!” she calls out behind him.

  He holds on to the buck to subdue the struggling and kicking of its final agony. When he lets go at last, he doesn’t look at her. Almost guiltily he skins the small carcass and goes outside to wash his hands in the snow.

  She doesn’t speak. When he returns, she looks up briefly, and resumes her efforts to get the fire going, her teeth chattering slightly.

  “Why did you do it?” she asks at last.

  “It's weeks since we had fresh meat.”

  “You betrayed it.”

  “Betrayed? We’ve got to stay alive. It's snowing. Who knows for how long we’ll have to stay here?”

  She looks at him quietly; then nods with a weary little sigh. “I suppose you’re right.” Once again the cough begins to rack her body.

  “You must have some of the meat,” he says. “Will you try it raw?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Then I’ll just scorch it in the flames for you. Please. This weather is bad for you.”

  “But the buck…”

  “It's just meat now.”

  “Yes, of course.” Yet she has to shut her eyes tightly when she takes a small piece, hot from the flames; clenching her jaws to force it down.

  Her resignation really upsets him more than the explosion he was expecting.

  “Try to think of it this way,” he says, without any objection from her to prompt him. “Suppose it was a lion that came in here last night, and not the buck: then it would have tried to kill us.”

  “Are we no more than animals then?” she asks, without looking up.

  “How can you survive if you’re not prepared to be an animal?” She doesn’t answer. “There's something I’ll never forget,” he goes on. “One day I went up the mountain with my Master—when he was my Master. We had to leave early, he was in a hurry; and I didn’t have time for breakfast. There was a patch of ground up there he wanted me to clear, to see whether it would be good for an orchard. He stood looking out over the slope while I was digging away. Suddenly he said, “Hell, Adam, just look at it—beautiful sight from here, isn’t it?” But all I could think of while I was working there was: I’m hungry. I suppose I would have liked the view too, if my stomach had been full like his.”

  She looks up at him, and then down again, coughing. He moves closer to her, holding her, feeling her body contract and shudder.

  “All right,” he says. “All right. It’ll go away. I’ll fetch you some more herbs.”

  And a little later he goes out again, wrapped in his kaross, disappearing into the snow.

  Erik Alexis, she suddenly thinks, also shot buck, and birds—all the most beautiful animals he found on their trek—to draw them or stuff them or to preserve their skins, collecting their data to forward to Stockholm one day, so that each specimen would be named correctly. The meat was usually given to the Hottentots. Or, if they’d had their fill, it was buried, to keep hyenas off their bloody trail.

  In the evening he returns with new herbs for her cough and milk-bulbs for his own cracked feet. And she feels exultant to see him; cuddled beside the fire it is she who starts caressing him, inviting him. Take me. Let us be animals in our cave together. Soon the winter will be over.

  Through days and weeks it slowly begins to thaw outside; the sun returns. Breaking out from behind the dispersing clouds it sparkles on a trembling world, warming it, making it more habitable. Sometimes Adam returns with a rock-rabbit which has risked it out in the open; sometimes with fruit, or dug-up roots, or edible leaves. Her cough diminishes. She is still thin and exhausted, but no longer ill. The snow disappears, the ground dries out again. And one morning, when he comes outside—far in the mountains a dove is cooing with heartrending urgency—he stands looking out over the valley, and then turns to call her out to him.

  “The winter's past,” he says. “We can go on. We have survived.”

  There was no gradual transition between the seasons. It took them several days to get through the mountains; there were no towering cliffs, only a seemingly endless profusion of high hills—yet there was something definite about it, a clear barrier between coast and interior. As sharp as a knife-edge, the dividing ridge stretched across their route and the moment they began the descent on the other side everything was different. The bushes and green hills, the rivers, and de
nsely overgrown streams and valleys had disappeared irrevocably. On this side the country was more even, billowing gently among the hills, with clusters of wagon-trees. For the rest, harsh shrubs growing close to the ground, and grass, white and brittle under their feet. None of the snow melting on the mountains had run down this way. Yellowish and brown, the landscape stretched out before them to the horizon; and when one reached it, the same scene was simply repeated, farther and farther away; with the mountains on their left, and another range gradually building up in the distance to their right, blackish, more formidable than the first.

  And the sun was blazing. No gentle changeover from the winter cold of the mountains to mild spring weather: in this long valley between the mountains there was no sign of spring at all, no veld flowers or cool breezes or lush grass to welcome them. High in the white sky the white sun was burning, the colorless and fierce unblinking eye of a bird-god. Trapped among the mountains the heat lay motionless, undiminished even at night, increasing all the time as they went on.

  From time to time there was game in the distance, sprinkled sparsely on the arid veld. Ostriches, small groups of springbuck streaming down the hills, their white fans dazzling, guinea-fowl squeaking in the dry grass, a leopard in a sandy spot under white thorns, almost invisible in the dappled sun and shadows; occasionally an oryx with Jong straight horns and once a herd of buffalo stampeding in a cloud of dust. Once, too, a pride of lions feeding on a gnu, fortunately far away and above the wind.

  Their progress was slow. She still felt weak after the inertia of the winter months and the racking cough, and he did not want to break her in too suddenly. There was a long and arduous trek ahead, and a too energetic start might set one back later, when the body would have to survive on accumulated stamina. There were angry arguments about this slow progress; she was impatient and impetuous. But he restrained her, and in spite of her open resentment he ordered regular stops for eating and resting.

  Much against her will she was forced to resign herself to it. For on their very first day on the plains the sun overcame her. He had made them Hottentot aprons for the trek, using the karosses for carrying their few possessions, and neglecting to consider the effect of the heat on her bleached body. That first evening she was flaming red all over, the pattern of the apron a shocking white contrast across her hips and thighs. She found it difficult to sleep that night. But she refused to complain, knowing that if he discovered her agony he would trek even more slowly.

  But on the second day it became unbearable. Resting for a while among some wagon-trees, he noticed her exploring her flaming shoulders with her fingers, her face contorted with pain.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, shocked by the sight of her glowing body, the tender skin of her breasts blistered.

  She clenched her teeth. “We’ve got to move on. It's no use waiting here.”

  “It will get even worse farther on.” He saw her shudder as he touched her breasts in awe. “You’ll get burnt to death like this.”

  “What can I do about it?”

  “Why didn’t you wear your kaross?”

  She undid her bundle and tried to drape the skins around her shoulders, but the mere touch was too painful to bear. Angrily she wiped away the tears forced into her eyes by the effort.

  “We’ll just have to stay here until you’re better,” he ordered.

  “No! We still have so far to go.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever get there if you go on like this?”

  Something had to be done urgently before her condition got worse. From the assortment of food he had brought with them, he took some honey and, mixing it with buck's fat, gently covered her body with it. He gave her water to drink and to wash her face, then gathered leaves from the scraggy wagon-trees to lay on her forehead.

  By late afternoon she was seriously ill, in spite of his efforts. She found it impossible to lie still, yet the smallest movement was agony: her back, her stomach, her sides, everything was scalded, and to make it worse she was beginning to shake with cold fever.

  He covered her with the kaross and went off in search of castor-oil leaves to cure the fever; coming back, he again covered her with the mixture of fat and honey, and forced her to chew some gli-roots which made her light-headed and less conscious of the pain. In a half-stupor she continued to groan, mumbling incoherently throughout the night, quarrelling with him, crying from time to time. But at daybreak she finally dozed off, and when she woke up, hours later, the fever had left her.

  “We can go on now,” she said, still shivery.

  “No. We’re staying right here until you’re better.”

  “But I am!”

  “No.”

  “Adam,” she said in hopeless anger, “don’t you understand I can’t wait any longer?”

  “What difference does a week or a month make? If you insist on going on now, I’ll have to bury you in a porcupine hole tomorrow and trek on alone from there.”

  Once more he used the salve on her and made her drink the half-fermented gli-roots mixed with honey so that her euphoria returned; throughout the long day he sat beside her, smoking quietly.

  Slowly the worst of her burns began to ebb away. Her breasts were still agonizingly tender to the touch, but on her back the redness was already yielding to a deep tan. Even so, he insisted on staying there for several more days, until he felt satisfied that she was strong enough for going on, trekking for short distances in the early morning and late afternoon only.

  For the time being she wore the heavy kaross to cover her from head to foot; and during the days, while she lay resting in the shade, he went off in search of food to strengthen her. It wasn’t easy to stalk game in this open country, but on the second day they passed a drinking-place where he managed to shoot a springbuck lamb with the pistol. The tender meat revived her considerably. Unfortunately, in this heat, it was impossible to store much of it. They cooked it all immediately; even so, they had to throw the rest away after a few days.

  At least they kept going, which was most important at the moment. There was even a touch of elation in their progress, a strange irrational joy: Look, we’re suffering, but we’re not defeated by it. We shall survive.

  Sometimes when they were resting during the dazzling hours of the day she remembered, with a sense of wonder, her endless discontent in the Cape and on her journey with Larsson. That restlessness, that rebelliousness in her, the interminable quarrels with her mother and her all-too-timid father. Now it was different. She would always remain impatient, driven by the urgency to get things done. But at the same time she experienced a new sense of peace. The timeless existence at the sea had brought her the discovery, in herself, of something she’d never been aware of before: a faculty for happiness. That in itself sustained her through the all-demanding days. I know now that it is possible for me to be happy, I have explored serenity, something inside me has opened wonderfully, I have traveled farther into myself and nothing can ever be quite the same again.

  After a fortnight she even found it possible to gradually give up the kaross, walking beside him in the sun wearing only her apron; sometimes not even that. Until the brown toughness was restored to her body, even more effectively than before.

  There was something pristine and intensely physical about this experience of walking on and on in the endless valley between the distant mountain ranges: an awareness of limbs—of feet stretching and treading, calf muscles, thighs, the small tendons tightening in the groin; arms swinging, a back straining against the load on the shoulders—surrounded by the violence and stillness of this space, huddled hills bleached in the sun, scorched bushes, stubbly grass, groups of gnarled and weatherbeaten trees, sky. Imperceptible progress, yet, with every new day, every resting place, a little bit nearer—to something.

  Separate objects on the road caught her attention, absorbing her completely, so that she became oblivious of motion altogether. A thorn-tree stump with all redundant bark and softness stripped by wind
and sun, reduced to pure wood, a bare hard pattern of indestructible grain. A rock formation corroded through centuries, all sandiness and nakiness destroyed, terrifying and beautiful in its utter stillness, its refusal to be anything but itself. The disconcerting movement of a tortoise, ridiculous on its stubbly scaly legs, the ancient neck stretched forward, the toothless gums exposed, the eyes beady and uncompromising; life reduced to mere motion, hard in a hard land. With the sickening surprise of tender pink meat and strings of eggs inside, when Adam dug out the small senile head with his knife and broke open the shell on a stone.

  When did she first begin to suspect that the landscape was familiar? The outline of a hill, the pattern of a mountain range, a specific rock formation, a thicket of aloes or euphorbias, the curious bend in a dry river bed, the red ridges of eroded banks: in the beginning a mere sense of recognition, out of context and too deep for conscious comparison, welling up as from a previous existence. The simple discovery that nothing came as a surprise, that expectations were fulfilled unfailingly, and that—without even thinking about it—the view beyond the next ridge could be anticipated. It was, of course, possible that after two or three weeks the landscape had indeed become predictable. Yet there was this feeling, growing stronger all the time, of knowing it, of having seen it before.

  Certainly the barrenness of the region was unfamiliar. But if she ignored the dusty brown and red of shriveled bushes and bare earth, substituting waving grass, and patches of flowers, and greenery, it did become familiar. It must be the route she’d followed inland with Erik Alexis Larsson. Somewhere they’d entered this long valley, somewhere else they must have swerved out of it again: but this particular stretch she had seen before, trekking in the opposite direction.

  The first dilapidated ruin enhanced the impression. Barely a ruin, no more than a miserable little heap of subsided earth and stones and decayed wood. But it had been here when they’d come past on the wagon. In a few more days they should reach another ruin like this. With barely restrained excitement she began to look out for it, not daring to say anything to Adam about it: hoping to first discover it herself and confirm her hunch. But after two days the excitement began to wear off. There was nothing. Unless they’d passed lower down or higher up? The disappointment was almost too much to bear. Not that she could explain what difference finding the ruin would really have made. It was just that she’d missed something. And then, unexpectedly, more than a week later, when she’d long given up hope, they came upon the ruin after all. She realized immediately why she’d been so mistaken in her calculations: they were traveling so much more slowly now. Two or three days on the wagon easily equaled seven or more on foot, the way they were progressing now, walking only in the cooler hours of the day.