She did her work thoroughly and dutifully, I must admit, and however restless and moody she may have been at times, in her lessons she was painfully precise: what she taught me I retained, and remember to this day. “Remember, your late father paid dearly for your education!” old Oom Flippie Marais chided once, years later when I was a grown woman, in the hallway of our town house one late afternoon shortly after Father’s death. “He paid a lot of money for your education,” he snapped, “with governesses from the Boland and what not! Who else in these parts had as much?” He must have come to visit Mother that afternoon, for he was an elder in the church and they lived in town, but what was the reprimand about, and why was the old man so upset, a spiteful, envious old man who came upon me in the half-light of the hallway where I was not expecting him? But he was right: who among the people of that generation was as educated as I, a mere girl? Father paid her in gold coins, I remember, and she locked away the money in a tin box in her trunk; and what she taught me I retained all my life, everything except the sewing and the handicrafts.
The mourning period for her parents had long passed, and when she was in the Boland some family member gave her a brightly-coloured frock – why do I suddenly see it so clearly, the grey material with the small, regular pattern of purple flowers? She planned to remake it for herself, and from time to time she would suddenly throw herself into the task resolutely and work at it until late, using fine, strong, tiny stitches, her head close to the candle-stub, oblivious to all else in the world. A stiff, glossy fabric with a pattern of stripes and flowers, round and round, and she mentioned a white collar she wanted to make. Why did she rush so to finish it? For what occasion and for whose benefit did she want to wear it? But the next minute it was as if she had lost interest or hope, and for weeks the unfinished frock would lie folded in her trunk once again. I never saw her wear it: I suppose she first had to wear out her black mourning outfits. It must have been at this time, during the second year Miss Le Roux spent with us, that I went to our bedroom one evening to fetch something. It was twilight but not yet dark, so that I did not take a candle, and in the half-light I saw her: motionless at the window with the dress on her lap, needle in hand. She was startled when I entered so unexpectedly and averted her head quickly and brushed her hand across her face. I was scared and shy and pretended not to see or understand; with my back to her I stooped to search for something in the chest in the corner, feeling around in the dark, not remembering what I had come to fetch, and again I promised myself, blindly and uncomprehendingly, with my face to the dark wall, unaware of what I wanted to avoid or how I would do so, that this would not happen to me.
Thus Miss Le Roux spent two years with us in all, and the next time we went down to the Karoo for the winter, she and Father left in the cart once more, after which we did not see her again. I must have been fourteen or fifteen by that time, for soon afterwards I was confirmed and considered fully educated: I could read fluently in Dutch and English, even the old-fashioned black letters in our family Bible, and give the meaning of most words I encountered, I could write evenly in round, open letters on unlined paper, with few spelling errors, and I could do arithmetic on paper as well as mentally, and calculate amounts in pounds, shillings and pence. I was the youngest in the confirmation class in Worcester and I knew more than any of the other young people, boys or girls, so that the old Dominee praised me in front of all the others and held up Father and Mother as an example to all parents in the Roggeveld. The other young people avoided me more than ever, however, as if I were a strange apparition, and it was almost as if they felt an animosity towards me that I could not understand. But what did I care about their antagonism? I had been confirmed and we returned to the farm and I would have nothing more to do with them.
When she left, Miss Le Roux left behind the books from which she had taught me, for Father had probably paid for them, and she counselled me not to forget what I had learned. The books remained in my room and I read in them regularly, without Mother ever commenting, though I know she was not fond of books or book-learning and never liked to see anyone read in our home. I helped her in the house and looked after Maans, and when he was about five or six, Mother said it was time for me to teach him what I knew, so that was added to my duties. I taught him to read and write and do arithmetic, everything I knew, and from time to time Father got in touch with a Dominee in Worcester and had a few more books or a case of pens and writing paper delivered. He was an easy-going child who tried his best and gave me no trouble, even though he did not learn very well, and I did not mind sharing my own knowledge with him. Personally I had never seen much use in my education, for it was more than was needed to be confirmed, and otherwise it only served to set me apart from the other young people at Nagmaal and church meetings, the boys staring at me awkwardly and the giggling girls with their arms around each other turning away from me.
Why do I relive all these things? Why do I remember how, in the late afternoon, towards evening, Maans and I would sit on a bench in front of the house, he spelling out the letters in his reading-book while I was busy with some task? The child bent over his work and the peace of the late afternoon, the wall of the house still warm behind my back with the precious heat of the day, the time when the cows came home to be milked and the shadows stretched across the yard – why do I remember this? The child asks me something so that I bend down to help him: I look up, and across his bowed head I see the veld stretched out in the evening light and the horizon changing colour, and I realise with sudden clarity that this is why they gave me an education, why Miss Le Roux was fetched from the Boland and paid in gold coins, why Father ordered the books and the cases of writing paper from the Cape: not for me, their daughter, but for the grandson and heir, so that when he was old enough I would be properly equipped to take on the task of his education.
What else did I expect then, and what reason did I have to be surprised at this insight? In some way I must have believed that it was for my own sake, their only daughter, their only remaining child, as a sign of affection that seldom found any other way of expression; but it was a foolish and reckless belief, for surely I had no right to expect more than the food, clothing and shelter that were granted to me? I still remember the desolate feeling that came over me as I sat beside the child on the bench in front of the house, staring at the veld stretching away to the horizon in the evening sun, wide and unbroken: the bench and the child beside me, the bowl on my lap – what was I doing? – and the emptiness before me in the evening light. Then I realised again how alone I really was.
For the next few years Father did his best to struggle along on the farm while his health declined rapidly, but during this time, with Maans beginning to grow up, Coenraad came to us. We did not receive many visitors, as I have mentioned, but sometimes a stranger would turn from the road or get lost and arrive at our door, usually on horseback, but sometimes on foot, like Coenraad. It was not customary for white people to travel on foot, and such visitors were not invited into the house, but were mostly given something to eat at the kitchen door and allowed to bed down in the outbuildings. When Coenraad arrived on the farm, however, we were without labourers yet again, so he did a few chores for Father and in the end he stayed on. I do not know much about him, only that he was a foreigner, and where he had been heading with his bundle of belongings I do not know either, I suppose for Beaufort or Colesberg, but he remained with us for as long as Maans was a boy. He worked diligently and conscientiously and never shirked his duties, not even when he had been drinking, and the only trouble Father ever had with him came from the farm-hands, for they complained that he was a hard master and that he beat them. Father did not approve, and in the old days he used to reprimand Jakob when he treated our people too harshly, but by this time Father’s word no longer carried much weight on the farm, and it was Mother and Coenraad who conferred and made decisions, for she trusted him and always took his side when there were differences of opinion. He slept behind a sc
reen he had erected in the shed and joined us only at mealtimes, and I remember how strange I found it that he did not attend our family prayers, but as far as I know nothing was ever said about it.
Coenraad seldom entered the house except at mealtimes, but I remember him in the evenings at the table in the candlelight, conferring with Mother. Father sat with them, half-absently stroking his beard with one hand, not contributing to the conversation. Something gleams in the candlelight, there is a sound – is it Coenraad receiving his wages? Suddenly I remember the glint of metal, and Mother’s face in the candlelight, her sharp eyes fixed on the money as she counts out the coins. Was it his wage that he received, or could he have been given money to buy sheep at auction because Father himself could no longer go? Sometimes he was indeed sent out alone, and he even had his own mount, and it must have been Mother and he who conferred and decided on the purchases, as he increasingly became the one to bargain with the people who came to buy sheep from us. Father counted out the gold coins from the pouch Mother had fetched in the bedroom and Coenraad rode off to carry out their instructions; but more and more often it was Mother who made the decisions and gave the instructions, more and more openly it was she, and we were prospering. Father was a good person, an honest and just person, but he had never actually been a farmer. It is good when a woman is the boss on a farm.
Who said that? Surely no one in our parts would have said anything like that, except in jest or scorn? Good or not good? It is not good …?
I was spending most of my life indoors, at Mother’s side or in her shadow; my duties, my timidity and our strange, isolated way of living bound me to the house increasingly, as if life were something I watched as it occurred outside in the brightness of day, in the yard beyond the threshhold, outlined by the doorframe. I was standing in the dim light of the house – who was in the doorway, visible against the light, and whose voice could I hear outside? Were we so frequently cursed, did so many people come to protest, threatening us with reprisal, or calling down heaven’s vengeance upon us? Yes, they probably did, and most likely more often than I ever realised, for how else were those gold coins collected, the morgens of land accumulated and the sheep flocks increased? It is not good; it is not right … Who was it? The daylight outside, and a voice. Father or Mother was standing on the threshhold, or both; both were standing there, and a herdsman had come to complain. It was not right.
Now I remember everything I had forgotten, including many things I have no desire to recall. A herdsman had come to complain to Father that Coenraad had thrashed his child, the man standing outside in the yard, while Father came to the kitchen doorway, leaning on his stick, Mother behind him as usual, just inside the door. Where could Coenraad have been that I do not remember him? But there was no need for Coenraad to worry about the labourers’ complaints and tales, after all, for Mother always supported and defended him. In the end the man had no choice but to leave and look for other work: “It is not right!” he cried. “It is not good!” What had happened, exactly? I do not know, but once he got going, Coenraad beat the labourers mercilessly, and he spared neither woman nor child, that I remember well. “We are also human!” he shouted over his shoulder as he crossed the yard, and the woman’s voice – yes, his wife had come with him, with the child who had been punished for some transgression or omission: “It is not good when a woman is the boss on a farm!” That was how it happened; that is what I remember. But, right or wrong, the man had to leave with his family and I suppose we found other workers yet again. It is not right – good or bad – how well I recall those words now. And the beams that have collapsed at Bastersfontein where the house stood empty, the thatch collapsed over the walls, and the fountain dried up.
It was during this time, when Coenraad was still with us, that I went to Bastersfontein, when the houses there stood empty because we could not find labourers, and when Maans was still at home; Maans was young and did not understand, laughing beside me as the wind plucked at my clothes, and my billowing hair blinded me momentarily; it was during this time, when the child was my sole companion during the day, and in the evenings when he was asleep, I withdrew to join old Dulsie at the hearth as she smoked and muttered to herself, increasingly unaware of my presence or of events around her. She had grown old and was probably tolerated in the house only through Father’s intervention, for there was little she could still do and she lived mostly inside her own head, always talking about the past. Could this have been why I went to the kitchen in the evenings, sitting silently in a dark corner of the hearth, because it was the only place where I could hope to hear Pieter and Sofie’s names? But if she knew anything, she never let on to me, cautious even in her withered old age, and the things she remembered and the long, rambling conversations she had with herself were seldom about subjects that interested me, except that one evening in late autumn shortly before we went down to the Karoo: a cold evening, with Dulsie muttering and mumbling, drawing at her pipe and shoving another branch into the fire. Perhaps Mother and Father were already asleep, for Father went to bed early, and I was lingering at the fire in the only moments of freedom I knew. One of the first cold evenings of frost or sudden snow in the Roggeveld when preparations for the trek had already begun, the fire dwindling in the hearth, and Dulsie talking to herself about Jakob and Gert once getting into an argument about a bay horse, and about a saddle and bridle that had belonged to someone or had been taken from him. I could not follow and was no longer listening when suddenly, as if woken from a dream, I was alerted by the sound of familiar names. “And Gert and that arrogant Malay meid stealing food here in the house, thinking I cannot see them, or hear them whispering here in the dark, and Gert riding over to Bastersfontein every night when Jakob and Sofie were hiding out there …”
In the dark corner I sat motionless: Jakob and Sofie, Jacomyn and Gert – what was she talking about? Something stirred, something rustled in the shadows beyond the last glow of the fire burning low in the hearth. Old Dulsie had forgotten what she was talking about, however, and said no more, and I dared not ask in case she spoke again. Something stirred in the dark; but it was nothing, only the wind driving the fine, sifting snow through the gap underneath the door. Then Dulsie laughed triumphantly. “And Gert lying so shamelessly and making the Oubaas ride all the way to the Boland to look for them, Gert with his smooth tongue who took Jakob’s saddle and bridle for himself when he left …” Her thoughts travelled far; she drew on her pipe thoughtfully, suddenly cackling loudly. “Oh, how he fooled them,” she crowed, rocking gleefully at the memory. “All the way to the Boland with Jakob’s saddle and bridle, and the two of them sitting at Bastersfontein all the while, Jakob and Sofie, while Gert rides around with his saddle. Oh, how he fooled them, good, good!” she cried, rocking from side to side. I did not move, I did not breathe, too afraid to miss a word or to misunderstand, but the confused memories faded and the old woman dozed on her seat in front of the fire: I was rising cautiously to go to my room when she spoke again. “Back from the Boland empty-handed,” she mumbled contentedly, and then she fell asleep and I covered the last glowing embers with ashes and went to bed myself.
I suppose I could have asked, there is no harm in asking, but I had learned long ago that you get no answers to your questions, and in her lucid moments Dulsie would never have discussed these things with me. I never discovered what train of thought had suddenly sparked off those comments that evening, and she never referred to anything like that again, no matter how carefully I listened to her musings: thus I had to be satisfied with the scant information I had come upon so inadvertently. Jakob and Sofie at Bastersfontein? – no, that could not be right. But Pieter and Sofie; and Gert riding over to Bastersfontein at night with food Jacomyn had stolen from the house, Gert who finally left us to seek his fortune elsewhere, with his horse and his rifle and the saddle and bridle belonging to the late Jakob who had been found dead in the kloof, Gert and Jacomyn … What had actually been behind Dulsie’s gloating words, and
whose side was she on: did she blame Gert for the way he had deceived Father, or revel in the success of his deceit? But she was on no one’s side, dependent like all of us on the goodwill of any random person who could aid or protect her, equally inclined to disparage and insult her fellow-servants as to delight in the ruin of her masters, her loyalties permanently divided by the need for survival. Alone, I realised as I bent over the hearth to extinguish the fire and felt my way to my room through the dark house; alone, man turned against man in selfishness, discord and spite.
In all the years Bastersfontein had been no more than a name to me, an isolated place where Jan Baster and his people once lived and, in later years, our herdsmen and their families, and I had never been there myself; yet it was on our land, at the farthest limit of our farm, and there was no reason why I should not go there if I wished. I would have to wait, however, until spring when we returned from the Karoo: wait, I told myself while I helped Mother pack the crates and tie up the bundles for the trek downward; wait, I said as our trek began the descent down Vloksberg across the rocky ridges, and I looked back at the faded grey winter landscape of the plateau we were leaving behind, looked back at the clouds covering the distant horizon where I knew Bastersfontein lay; wait, I repeated during the months of our stay in the Karoo, and I yearned for the Roggeveld more strongly than ever.
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