This Life

by Karel Schoeman

  Years later, when Maans was a young man and he opened the Bible to record Father’s death, he read through all the entries. “But this is your handwriting,” he said to me. “Why did you write in the Bible when Mammie died?”

  It was a rainy day and it was even darker than usual in the voorhuis: Mother sat close to the window with her back to us, and I did not know whether she had heard the question. “Oupa was often ill during that time,” I said at last, and in the silence I heard the rain dripping through the thatched roof on to the floor-boards of the loft; and it was true that he was frequently ill in the time after Sofie and Pieter left us, even confined to his bed at times, but that was not why he had not entered the date into the Bible himself. He had probably never even seen the inscription, for the next entry in the family tree was his own death, so he had had no reason ever to look it up.

  How long did that silence last? Father immersed in his pain and Mother in her bitterness, Jacomyn distant and waiting in the house where she was merely tolerated, and Dulsie gradually becoming old and grumpy, and the only sound the wind outside, the whirling dust against the shutters, and the wailing of the baby as Jacomyn paced up and down with him, shuffling across the floor on bare feet. How long could it have lasted? Oh, long, very long; months passed and eventually became years, seasons of blustering snow and uncertain springs drifted across the veld, and the only sound was the wind against the shutters. My only company was the servants as I sat unnoticed in the corner of the kitchen in the evenings, the silent listener in the corner, and sometimes entire days passed during which no one thought to address me except to give me an order or to scold me for some oversight. It was autumn and the wind whipped the dust across the veld, so that the shutters were closed and we lived in the dark with only the fire in the kitchen glowing in the hearth; the darkness and the silence, the rattling of the doors and shutters in the wind and the grating noise as the wind swept along dust and fine pebbles and branches, and the child crying, and Jacomyn’s bare feet across the dung floor. I was often alone, and in my childhood years loneliness gradually became second nature to me. Sometimes I wandered far from home without knowing what I was looking for, driven farther and farther, gazing at the faded, flat landscape from every ridge, as if I were searching for something. But what did I expect to see? Dassies slipping away among the rocks when they saw me, or a jackal buzzard rising from its prey to hover in the air on outstretched wings, the sheep flocks grazing among the bushes or the wispy smoke of a herdsman’s lonely fire at his shelter miles away, or at most a lone rider, unrecognisable across the distance, or the white tent of a wagon on the distant mountain pass, strangers passing by our isolated homestead without even considering turning off and paying us a visit in our isolation. I did not expect company, however, neither did I desire the arrival of strangers in our midst; I turned from the distant road and chose places where not even the sheep went, and I walked farther and farther as if I were heading for some distant destination. I saw the low hills darken and the renosterbos glow with a bluish tinge as the thin silver sunlight faded at the end of the day, and in my fervour to reach that mysterious distant goal, I began to run, stumbling along the plateau on the crest of the mountain at the end of the world. The silver light streamed away before my eyes and I lost my footing on the uneven ground.

  One of the herdsmen apparently found me there in the veld. Whether they had been searching for me and whether they had been anxious or worried about my disappearance, or for how long I had lain there before he found me, I have no idea. I fell, I suppose – what does it matter now, except for the scar on my forehead, and I learned to live with that a long time ago. Near the edge of the escarpment he found me, far from home, but that is all I know. When I regained consciousness, it was night, and by the light of the oil lamp I could make out among the flickering shadows in the room old Dulsie where she sat sleeping on a chair beside my bed; and then it was dark again. Of course it could not have been so very long, those months of emptiness and silence in the empty, silent house; it was autumn when Pieter and Sofie left and not yet winter when they found me in the veld, near the end of autumn it must have been, for my illness had once again prevented Mother from going down to the Karoo with Father, and we had to stay behind in the Roggeveld. I suppose Gert went with Father, and perhaps Jacomyn and the child as well, and Dulsie must have stayed behind to help Mother. Or did Mother go with Father after all, leaving me behind with Dulsie? I was sick all winter and unconscious or delirious most of the time, so that my memories of those months are vague and confused, but I do not remember Mother being there, only that Dulsie was always beside me with a kaross around her shoulders against the cold and her feet on a stove, or curled up on the floor in front of the bed at night; Dulsie holding me, trying to make me drink from a bowl, Dulsie throwing open the shutters that had been closed against the cold and letting the first pale daylight of spring into the room.

  Why do I not remember Mother? The more anxiously, the more deeply I delve into my confused memories, the more they slip and slide away, but not for a moment can I find her face anywhere. There is no one I might ask about it any more, and yet I realise that sixty years later it is still important to me, I still want to know whether Mother left me or stayed with me and whether she showed any sign of anxiety or concern during my long illness. How dearly I would like to discover her among the fragments of my memories, bending over my bed for a moment, her hand on my brow, her arm around my shoulders; but it is only Dulsie I see before me. Who helped her then? Sofie I remember, bending over the flickering light, her face recognisable for just a moment, and then her dark hair like a veil, hiding it from view, obscuring her features; Sofie – but no, that was a different time, it is an older memory, and if I had seen her during this time, bending over my bed in the candlelight, an inscrutable look in her dark eyes, if I had seen her, then it must have been an illusion, a shadow, a distortion created by the darkness on the walls of the room where I lay.

  Dulsie’s head sinks forward in her vigil beside the bed, she nods for a moment as she dozes off, then sits up abruptly, bewildered, looking around her, uncertain of her whereabouts. Then slowly, mumbling to herself, she gets up and arranges her bed on the floor, and against the wall her distorted shadow joins the other shadows, lengthening and shrinking, extending and flowing together in fluid patterns. The dancing light of the flame, flickering for a moment in the wind, and the smell of the kraal and the veld, the smell of fire made with bushes and dung, of dung fire and smoke and herbs. Why do I remember that smell, and how did it find its way into my room where the shutters were closed against the cold and where we lived in eternal half-light and candlelight and darkness? The smell of smoke and bushes, the smell of boegoe and soil and dust, and a hand on my forehead that was not Dulsie’s. Could it perhaps have been Mother, Mother after all? But no, a strange hand, and strange voices murmuring in the dark. Who was that stranger – the wife of a herdsman who had slept in the house with Dulsie during that long winter? I do not remember anyone who resembled her, however, neither was she like the Basters or Hottentots of our parts. On some of the farms in the Roggeveld there were still Bushmen from the days of the raids and battles before my birth, when the men were killed and the surviving women and children herded together and put to work by the white farmers, and it seems as if it could be an old Bushman woman that I remember; but we never had any of these people in our employ except as herdsmen, and they would never have been allowed inside the house. It is possible that it was an illusion, one more illusion among the many that merge with the shadows, and yet I know it was not my imagination, and that I saw her here in my bedroom, beside my bed, with her hand on my brow, and I remember the muttering of strange voices and the smell of bushes and herbs and kraal fires.

  That, however, is all I remember of those weeks and months, for the winter passed without my being aware of it, and it was spring, and the sheep returned from the Karoo: I opened my eyes in my bed and saw the bright silver light streaming in
side where Dulsie had thrown open the shutters, and the pale blue of the sky outside, and I was aware of the delicate, hesitant warmth and the smell of the veld after the rains. Outside the sheep were bleating at the kraal and I heard Father shouting at the herdsmen and Gert’s voice calling; inside the house I could hear Mother in the kitchen. I lay there like someone who had returned after a long absence, trying to make sense of the sounds. Like someone searching for words in a long-forgotten language, I recalled their names one by one. I averted my face from the bright window, exhausted by the effort, and fell asleep again.

  I survived, though apparently no one had expected it. While I was ill, they had ordered boards from the Boland and a coffin had been made for me that I saw unexpectedly years later when it was taken from the rafters in the shed for the funeral of one of the neighbours’ children. Maans said it was a child’s coffin, and it took a while before I realised it was mine and I could picture my own shape in the dimensions of that child’s coffin, the thin girl who had turned around at death’s door after months, to arise from her sickbed. Yes, as if I had returned from another country and spoke a different language, and for a while they did not know how to behave towards me and where I fitted into their circle. Were they grateful, were they glad? No one showed any gratitude or joy, except perhaps Father. Because there was no mirror in the house, it was only much later that I saw myself with the scar on my forehead where my head had struck a rock as I fell, but I could feel it with my fingers, and I must have been a peculiar sight, for during my illness my hair had been shaved, and it took long before it began to grow out again.

  That spring with the wild flowers and Sofie laughing in the veld, the flowers whipped from her hands as she held them out to me; that spring of the shifting light and shadows when Sofie and Pieter sank down into the shadowy pools and were lost to me; and finally that long spring of my return – how much had changed within two years and how different that season was when, carefully and hesitantly, I learned to move through the house again. A time of delicate, drifting, silver daylight and the gleam of the water in the dams below the house, and across the pale green fields of spring the two horses galloped away noiselessly to vanish over the horizon. The day was quiet and the house empty and for some reason I was alone, alone with the sudden knowledge, relentless and unavoidable, that I would always be as alone as I was at that moment. I was a mere child and did not understand, but I turned my face from the silver light and did not want to know, not yet. Always. I could clearly feel the scar with my fingers and when, much later, I stood in front of a mirror again, it did not show me anything I did not already know.

  How much later it was, I do not know exactly, but it must have been towards the end of that spring that we were awakened one morning by old Dulsie’s shouts, and learned with dismay that Jacomyn and Gert were also missing. By that time so many people had left, however, that this fresh disappearance did not really affect me, though it must have been difficult for Mother, because Dulsie had aged and could not do much in the house any more, while Father was practically helpless and had been depending on Gert more and more. I still remember waking at daybreak to hear Dulsie shouting in the voorhuis, and sleeping on fitfully, vaguely aware of something I did not understand. What became of them? Gert took his own horses and the saddles and bridles and rifle that belonged to him, and Jacomyn her few pieces of clothing and trinkets and the floral shawl with the long tassels, and they disappeared from our world, over the edge of the mountains into the abyss. Much later, when Dulsie had become confused, in one of her incoherent fits of scolding and self-pity she railed against one of the Baster women who had helped us in the kitchen: “So insolent,” she muttered to herself, “just like that Malay meid who left here with Gert to go to the Boland.” Did she know, or suspect, or guess, or was she merely rattling on without knowing what she was saying? It was possible that they had indeed gone to seek their fortune in the Boland, for what other refuge could there have been for them with their horses and saddles and rifle, their bundle of clothing and trinkets? We neither saw nor heard from them ever again.

  Did they love each other? I wonder suddenly, though the question has never occurred to me before and even now I hesitate to ask, for we never thought of our workers in those terms, and it never crossed our minds that our servants could fall in love or love each other, as seemed possible for us. But what is the use of wondering or asking, for I shall never know. Did they simply see a chance to escape, and conspire to outwit their masters, encouraged by the example of Pieter and Sofie before them? Or might there have been something like love, Gert and Jacomyn alone at the kraal wall, her black hair shining in the sun and the floral shawl around her shoulders? I shall never know.

  I drew the blanket over my face against the pale daylight and turned over, turned away, and something brushed against my cheek, against my lips, and slid from the pillow and came to rest under the bedcovers, in the hollow of my neck, an unfamiliar weight of which I remained aware in my sleep, as I was aware of the voices in the voorhuis. I slept on fitfullly until at last I awoke, and there, against my neck, I found a small cloth bundle which I unwrapped dazedly to discover a tiny ring. Not yet completely awake, I stared at it, trying to remember where I had seen it before, and then I realised it was Sofie’s ring with the little heart that she had worn the night of the New Year’s dance, and I realised that Sofie was back, that she had returned to us from afar, and I jumped up and ran barefoot through the voorhuis to her room to welcome her. But Sofie was not there: Father had gone out to the kraal, as there was no one else to do it, and in the kitchen Mother and Dulsie were feeding the baby, so that it took a while before someone noticed me, and Mother told me to get dressed and come and help with the chores. I returned to my room, returned to myself, returned to my silence, still holding in the palm of my hand the tiny ring with the heart that had gone unnoticed, and I hid it under the mattress where it would not be found readily. No more was said about those who had left, except sometimes by old Dulsie muttering to herself in the kitchen, and it was as if they were all dead and their deaths might as well have been entered in the Bible.

  One day soon afterwards when no one was near to see what I was doing, I went outside. It was the first time I had left the house since the day of my flight, the day I was picked up in the veld, and I remember hesitating at the corner of the kitchen, my hand on the familiar roughness of the stone wall for support, overwhelmed by the wideness of the yard in front of me, by the sudden expanse of the veld and the blinding brightness of the silver light streaming from the lofty sky. I did not hesitate long, however, fearful of being caught at any moment. Slowly and resolutely I crossed the yard, light-headed and weak after my lengthy illness, Sofie’s ring in the palm of my hand. Straining against the spring breeze that threatened to unbalance me, I finally reached the graveyard beyond the ridge, and there I hid the ring in the place between two stones where I had also secreted Meester’s little cross many years before, and I left it there where it would be safe. She had left it for me with Jacomyn, and when the time came for Jacomyn’s own departure, she came to my bedroom at night, barefoot in the dark, and left it on my pillow where I would discover it in the morning: I never found another explanation and if one existed, I prefer not to know about it, even now at the end of my life, but rather to keep believing that Sofie had let me have this gift months after her departure in the place of the farewell that was never said.

  3

  Gradually I recovered and adapted to the routine of the house and farm once more. For a while my reticence was still tolerated, but not for long, and one day I was sitting in the voorhuis when Dulsie pressed the baby into my arms impatiently. “There, take the child, he’s yours,” she snapped, and that is how I was given custody of Maans. He was just beginning to walk and he was a lively child, but he was never really naughty or disobedient and, as for me, I had all the time and patience in the world. We were good company for each other, for even when he began to talk, it was some time before he
learned to understand or wonder or ask, and so it was possible for me simply to carry on at first, without having to think or remember. Moreover, he was a beautiful child, with Jakob’s dark eyes; of course Sofie had dark eyes too, but Maans was Jakob’s child, entirely his, or so I always thought. I came to love that child who had been given into my care so unexpectedly; yes, I loved him, until he grew up and outgrew me, and now there is almost nothing left of that closeness. He was in the house with me all day, either in my arms or on my lap, and later I took him out for short walks in the veld, until eventually I was no longer afraid of the space and the light; later it was good for me to have an excuse to escape from the quiet, gloomy house and sit in the veld with Maans playing near me. Dreamily, I turned my face to the sun again, unaware of what I was doing. I discovered anew the daylight and the day, and the familiar world revealed itself to me once more. They are coming, they are coming; but I could no longer remember who, and I tried to keep the remaining memories at bay while I gazed mindlessly at the distant glitter of the dams in the light, until Maans became impatient because I did not listen or reply, and playfully tugged at my clothing or pulled my hair until it came undone and billowed around my head and across my face. As a child I went along with others without asking where we were going, others led me, carefree, by the hand; now I took this child out for walks and decided on our destination myself.