I might have set my course for some unknown destination like a trekboer family with their wagon and handful of sheep, or a farm-hand looking for a new master, his bundle over his shoulder, and if I saw a rider in the distance, I might have crouched among the low renosterbos like a fugitive, until he had passed. Ahead of me I saw the scattered houses of the town waiting for me, the stone walls and the whitewashed walls, the thatched roofs, the bare limbs of the fruit trees and the high white ridge of the church roof. The coloured women gathered harpuisbos in the veld for firewood, the girls tended the goats where they were grazing and in summer they sometimes wandered far, looking for veldkos; there were white women who went to Ouplaas with the washerwomen to do their own laundry there. I could only visit Mother’s grave, however, and stand there, looking out over the veld, my back to the distant houses of the town. After a while the young minister came to see me and gently and lovingly and very earnestly pointed out that it is not good to grieve too deeply or to mourn for too long, and that we should not cling to our loved ones or to our memories of them. Even in my loneliness, he said, stuttering slightly, for he was young and still had much to learn, even in my loneliness life still had much to offer and I had a task, no, a duty to fulfil, a solemn duty, here in the congregation where as a member of a respected family I held such an honoured position and was so highly esteemed. Neither would my mother have wished for me to become so absorbed in my loss, he assured me fervently; and after that I did not go to the graveyard so often.
What prevented me from following that white road, those twin tracks among the stones and shrubs, up the slopes to the edge of the mountains and the farm? Mother was no longer there to forbid the journey and no one had remained behind on the farm that winter to whom I would have to explain my sudden arrival; the house was deserted, the kraals and stables empty. I lay awake at night, as happened more and more often during that time, watching the moonlight move across the floorboards and considering the possibilities of my newfound freedom. My shoes stood in front of the bed, my clothes were on the chair where I had folded them on taking them off, my shawl hung over the back of the chair; I only had to get up and reach out my hand, for there was no longer any reason to be quiet, afraid that a creaking floor or a rattling doorknob might betray me. The town slept, its empty windows dark, and the barking of the dogs had died down; where I lingered on the stoep for a moment, the white street before me was as bright as day.
I followed the front street, past the last houses and the stone mounds and the scattered rocks of the graveyard until it stopped pretending to be a street and became a mere road again. Clouds moved past the moon and the pattern of track, shrub and stone flowed together before my eyes, so that I had to wait, light-headed and breathless with excitement. There is no hurry, I told myself, for no one will have noticed my flight, and it will be a long time before they become aware of my absence and begin to search: there is a long road ahead, and there is no sense in breaking into a run yet in my impatience to arrive. When it dawned on me what I was doing, however, I picked up the pace again. The moon had disappeared, its light dimmed, effacing the white track before my eyes, but I did not hesitate, for how could I not know the road home after all those years, and alone and on foot I could travel faster tonight than ever in the past by cart or wagon. Past Groenfontein and up the sloping ridge behind the homestead, suddenly surrounded by whirling snowflakes, icy against my face in the dark. I saw no lights at the farms I passed now and again, their buildings dark and deserted, and nothing was visible save the dark, rolling veld outlined against the murky horizon, nothing could be heard save the beating of my heart and my rasping breath as I hurried along, my shawl wrapped tightly around me against the cold, as I pressed on blindly, my feet finding their own way without waiting for memory to guide them. I stumbled over rocks but soon found my way back to the beaten track; I raced across the miles without wearying, until I could make out the hazy glitter of the dams in the half-light, and the dark buildings of our own farm took shape in the distance amid the surrounding gloom. The doors were closed, the shutters closed, the beams in front of the kraal gates fixed in their slots, but house, stable and kraals lay waiting, and if the doors were locked I could force open the shutters from the outside and hoist myself up over the window-sill into the familiar darkness of the house. I was back. And then?
Then, after that I did not know: perhaps that was why I hesitated and lost my nerve at the last moment, no matter how often I considered the possibilities and rehearsed the details of my flight in my imagination. What explanation would I give when they inevitably found me there, relentlessly demanding reasons and explanations, and what would finally come of my brief escape except that I would be brought back to town, held faster than ever by their watchfulness and concern, guarded with relentless love in a way that would leave me without even the semblance of freedom? That is why I never attempted that long journey. But had I pulled open the creaking shutters to lower myself over the window-sill in the dark, what would I have seen and heard? I turned my face away – it was only later, only now at the end of my life, that I learned to stare wide-eyed into the dark, unafraid of the voices in the silence. It remained a dream; I woke up with the tingling of snowflakes still on my lips and, seated on the edge of the bed, I reached for my clothes beside me to feel whether my shawl and the hem of my dress were still wet, my shoes still muddy from the journey.
When Maans and Stienie returned from the Karoo that year, they came in to town immediately to sympathise and to learn the details of Mother’s deathbed. I believe my answers to their questions were vague and confused, for I realised I could no longer remember the details of that distant death, neither did I know how to react to their sympathy. In a sudden upsurge of emotion Stienie advanced on me and I drew back instinctively to avoid her embrace. We rode out to visit the grave and Maans undertook to order a stone from the Boland, and we divided Mother’s personal belongings amongst ourselves, though there was not much of value except the gold chain; Maans took her Bible and hymn book, and then Stienie said she would not mind having the chain as a memento of Oumatjie, and declared that she wished for nothing else.
They spent a few days with me in town, and though Stienie chattered and fidgeted nervously and there was a steady stream of visitors to greet and to entertain, the three of us were constantly aware of the question that they were unwilling to ask and I was afraid to hear. Only when they were about to depart, their luggage already loaded on the cart that stood ready at the kitchen door and Stienie’s hat already pinned on, only then did she ask innocently and almost in passing if Tantetjie would not be lonely here in town on her own, and quite airily and casually I answered, oh no, not at all, it is so much more convenient to be here in town now that I am growing older, with the minister and the doctor close by and the neighbours always willing to help. At first I did not really know what I was saying, but it was clear as they were bidding me farewell that they were relieved, Maans because he did not have to worry about me, and Stienie because she would not be obliged to take me in. After all, she already had Betta, who was her blood relative and completely dependent on her; why should she have to be stuck with me as well? I stood at the gate, waving goodbye; I watched them ride away, my eyes following the dust from the cart all the way out of town and along the long, straight road that led to the farm. The dark, deserted farm of those winter months belonged to me, I realised, as did the house of my dreams and my unfeasible plans, and I no longer had any interest in the house to which they were returning, the house where Stienie reigned, with Betta carrying out her instructions, and where they would have provided me with a room if I had demanded it of them. It was better to remain here and endure the silent compassion or pity, to attend the prayer meetings and Sunday services alone and, once a week, to gaze out from the graveyard at the edge of town across the grey, rolling veld to where the roads climbed invisibly over the ridges.
The house was filled with a delicate spring light as bright as the reflected gl
itter of the snow. Sometimes I still found myself waiting or getting ready for something, sometimes I would start up suddenly because I thought someone was calling me, but that did not last long, and I soon became accustomed to my freedom. Sheltered by the garden wall or the stoep, the flowers emerged hesitantly in the cold spring, painstakingly grown, sheltered and kept alive, and in the bare, cultivated gardens of the town the trees, swaying in the eastwind, put forth buds; until October or November every night still held the possibility of frost, every day might bring a sudden whirl of snow across the rocky ridges. Against a stoep pillar of the parsonage the climbing rose Mrs Reyneke planted when she and her husband moved in the year before bloomed, but that same spring she died, and she lay buried in front of the church without ever having seen the first blooms on the young plant, their bright, translucent white petals unfurling in the bleak chill of the Roggeveld spring.
For a while people called on me on their return from the Karoo to convey their sympathy, and each time I heard the sound of horses’ hoofs in the street or a vehicle in front of the house, the squeak of the gate or the sound of footsteps across the boards of the stoep, I cringed. Gradually the danger passed, however, and the threat diminished, and it was as if people mercifully forgot about my existence, perhaps because I led such a retired life and took so little part in their activities, a silent spectator on the fringe of their meetings, a timid tantetjie in the background at their social events. Or perhaps they lost patience with my timidity and my silence, and limited themselves to the most basic tokens of politeness and goodwill. Only Maans and Stienie still came in to Nagmaal with Pieter and Betta and spent a few days with me, but it was their house too, though I saw them as intruders each time and their arrival as an invasion. For a few days the house would be filled with the sound of Stienie’s high heels on the floorboards and her chattering and her questions, her cross-examination and instructions and rummaging through cupboards – “Why don’t you rather do it this way, Tantetjie?” Fortunately Betta kept her company most of the time, for that was her task in life, and after a few days they left again and I saw the cart making its way past the thinly-scattered houses of the town and following the white road back to the farm, and I was delivered once more to my own freedom.
Thus I lived in the town house alone. How did I pass the days? I began to read again, I remember – I never had much time to read before, and Mother was always impatient when she saw me with a book and she would soon find something for me to do. The young minister would sometimes bring me a volume of sermons or a religious pamphlet because he knew Tannie liked such things, and he would smile at my strange pastime, and there were a few other people in town who also had books and who would lend them to me; the magistrate sent over his newspapers once he had finished with them, and when people in the district found out that I read, they sometimes arrived with an old book, or even a case of books they had inherited and had no use for. I read whatever I found, whatever I could, now that Mother was no longer there to complain about duties that were being shirked or candles that burnt down too quickly. “You must take care of your eyes, Tannie, you read far too much,” young Mr Reyneke scolded playfully, for he did not set much store by book-learning and his Dutch sermons were full of mistakes.
I wrote. Sometimes someone would still ask me to write a letter, and the writing materials were kept in the drawer of the dining-room table; sometimes I would take them out needlessly, the writing paper and the steel-nibbed pens and the ink, and arrange them on the table, and I would write, not the words someone else was dictating, but my own words that I had to seek and find before writing them down. Miss Le Roux had taught me to write neatly, in even, round letters with fine open loops and regular downstrokes, but when I tried to write for myself, my skilfulness would forsake me completely, and the paper would be rumpled and blotted, like the soiled, wrinkled cloths on which I had learned to embroider as a child. What did I wish to write? I no longer know – not letters, for there was no one who expected a letter from me; I suppose just the things I would have said if there had been someone to talk to, someone willing to listen and to understand, and if my tongue had not been burdened with obstructions. I know that I would sit there for a long time, facing the empty page on the bare tabletop and trying to find words, and when at last I was done, I would fold the paper several times and put it away at the back of a drawer in my wardrobe, behind the stockings and underclothes, where no one would find it. After a while I stopped, however, and one day I took out all those folded notes and burnt them in the kitchen stove without reading them again. It was not that I had lost heart because I found it too hard, only that I felt no further need to do it. And so I lived in town; for a number of years.
Maans had a tombstone erected on Mother’s grave, a large white stone from the Cape, conspicuous among all the low, flat headstones and stone mounds, with names and dates and texts from Scripture that the minister had helped him select; I touched it, and it was as cold to my fingers as the frozen clods of the soil that had covered the grave after her funeral.
Maans was doing well, for he was a meticulous, careful and hardworking farmer; moreover, he had inherited well, of course, and rumour had it that Stienie also inherited well when her father died, for she had been an only child. The people in our district loved Maans, solemn and restrained as he was, and they trusted his honesty, just as they had trusted Father all those years; and because he was slow to talk or react and deliberate in his judgement, he never really made any enemies. It went almost without saying that he would be a deacon and later an elder; when our town eventually got its own municipality, he became a town councillor, and when the time came, he was nominated as member of the district council. I do not know whether Maans himself was eager to serve in all these capacities, for he did not really enjoy meetings and conferences and public appearances, but he accepted the elections and nominations and he fulfilled his duties faithfully.
Because of all these commitments Maans and Stienie came to town more often, so that I saw them more regularly. To me it seemed as if Maans never really enjoyed having to drive in to town, dressed up in a stiff collar and tie and a suit or a frock-coat, but Stienie enjoyed it: when she was not in Worcester on some errand, or at the baths in Goudini, she was often in town, and sometimes I wondered if she would not have preferred to live in the town house herself, for I sensed that she was not as happy on the farm as in earlier years. She had dresses made, copied from pictures in the magazines she ordered from Cape Town, and she always wore the most stylish outfits in our little congregation, dresses with bows and frills and tassels and trains, as was fashionable in those days, and small hats with ribbons and flowers, so that everyone looked up on Sundays when she entered and took her place among the wives of the elders. I believe people learned to watch out for her quick eyes and sharp tongue, but because of Maans’s position she was a well-respected woman in our community. To look at her, you would not say that she had almost everything a woman could desire, and certainly more than most other women, for Stienie never really seemed happy or content. Could it have been because they had no children? Perhaps, but as far as I know, Stienie had never been particularly fond of children. Could it have been because there was no heir to the farms and the sheep flocks and the family name and status? But how could I understand and explain such mysteries, I who had avoided Jasper Esterhuysen when he was sent across the dance floor by his mother; I who had shut the door behind Abraham van Wyk as he departed and had made no attempt to respond to his offer? I never understood what Stienie’s childlessness might have meant to her, neither did I understand the meaning of her eventual pregnancy. These things remained as incomprehensible to me as the other mysterious matters the married women discussed in undertones so that I should not hear, and of what importance were my suspicions and inferences, and who cared about them?
As I have said, old Betta was living on the farm with Maans and Stienie during that time and took care of the household. When they came in to town periodically
, they would sometimes bring her along and at other times they would leave her behind, perhaps according to Stienie’s moods, but when she did come, she never accompanied them anywhere, and when they went out, they left her with me, where she would crochet and talk about her ailments and grievances, the stout, middle-aged widow with her monotonous, whining voice and the endless stream of complaints and reproofs she poured out without expecting a reply, while her nimble fingers carried on working uninterruptedly and the crochet hook flashed in the light.
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