Karel Schoeman - This Life

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 inside 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.