Karel Schoeman - This Life

That summer after my return to the farm was the summer of the long and bitter drought, and that also made it easier for me to adjust, for the unaccustomed barrenness rendered the familiar landscape alien to me, as if it were a strange new region that I encountered for the first time. Here along the fertile edge of the escarpment, with our ample fountains and dams, we were more fortunate than the farmers in the drier regions farther into the interior, and Maans still had enough grazing for his own sheep, but by the end of the year farmers from the Riet River district began sending their sheep flocks to us for grazing. By Christmas the veld was as dead as in winter, and we scarcely celebrated New Year, for though it was customary for Maans and Stienie to entertain all the neighbours on a grand scale, no one was in the mood for festivities this summer. Only the people standing on Maans’s land with their sheep gathered at the house for a glass of sweet wine; the young people danced a little to the rhythm of a mouth organ and an accordion, and the young men fired their rifles, but it was a joyless occasion and everyone soon departed again. The guests could not have felt very welcome in our home, for no matter how hospitable Maans always was and how willing to help others, Stienie made no effort to disguise her resentment of these uninvited strangers who were abusing her hospitality and destroying our grazing with their flocks, so that they tended to avoid the house. But perhaps I am not being quite fair to Stienie, for it was during this time that she fell pregnant and that might have been why she did not feel like entertaining: the time of the great drought was the time of Stienie’s pregnancy.

Nothing was mentioned to me, as usual, and it was taken for granted that I knew, or perhaps they thought I had no business to know. A few months after my arrival, Maans told me rather sheepishly how good it was to have me back, especially with Stienie being the way she was; it was not an easy time, I would surely understand … He left the sentence unfinished and gave no further explanation, but by then I had noticed that Stienie was less fastidious around the house, that she often complained, that she was wearing light, loose-fitting frocks and was spending more time lying down in her room.

How long had they been married at the time, Stienie and Maans? Fifteen, sixteen years, I would say, and never had there been any mention of a child, so that long before her death Mother had stopped speculating about the possible arrival of a great-grandchild, and even Stienie’s relatives had learned not to make any light-hearted allusions any more. Now, however, in these unrelenting months of heat and dust, the veld parched under the empty sky, the bushes shrivelled, the paths trampled to dust and the last fountains drying up, now her body suddenly became heavier and her movements clumsier, her hands and feet swelled with the heat and she lay on the sofa in the voorhuis, fanning herself, or sometimes failed to emerge from her darkened room at all. The child was due to be born only at the end of autumn or the beginning of winter, I gathered, for she said she did not feel up to the trek down to the Karoo in her condition, yet she made no attempt to prepare for the confinement, and at last I began to worry, for I knew enough about birth to realise that there were preparations to be made. There was no sense in discussing it with Maans, for what did men know about these affairs? And Stienie became annoyed and declined to be bothered with such matters. It was strange to see her like that, for I had never known her so listless and indecisive; on the contrary.

It must have been in May that Maans rode over to Komsberg to fetch old Tant Neeltjie Müller, who was the most skilful mid-wife in our parts: it was almost winter, for I recall how long the evenings seemed and how she and I sat in the voorhuis around the fire-pan and how she grumbled because she wanted to join her people in the Karoo, and with a pencil stub she would mark off the days in the back of her Bible. She and I finally made a few pieces of clothing and other items for the baby, but to me she did not seem very interested in this confinement and she took very little notice of Stienie, and when Maans asked how it was going, she just shrugged. He must have paid the old woman well to wait there for weeks on end with winter approaching, and it was probably only for the money that she stayed. At last she persuaded him to pour her a tot of brandy every evening, to which she added a few lumps of sugar, for the gout, she said. She would spoon this mixture from the glass, and soon be regaling us with tales about the difficult confinements and deaths she had witnessed over the years. How clearly I remember those last weeks of Stienie’s pregnancy, with the land caught up in a relentless drought, the shrivelled grey landscape of rock and dust and dry bushes under an empty white sky, the chill of the evenings as we sat waiting in the voorhuis together, the old woman with her cap, her fringed shawl and her little Bible, and the smell of the brandy-and-sugar concoction she was eating with a spoon.

Nothing happened. Motionlessly the land encompassed us, colourless sky above colourless, dead earth, and motionlessly winter settled around us. Fine snow whirled in the sky for a minute or two, the ice-flakes visible for a moment as they caught the light before vanishing again. Old Tant Neeltjie sat counting the pencil ticks at the back of her Bible, muttering to herself as she counted and checked on her fingers, her feet on Mother’s foot-stove that we brought out because she complained so bitterly of the cold; with unmistakable resentment she sat muttering to herself, and pushed her glass across the table in Maans’s direction so that he could fill it up again.

What exactly happened, I do not know, for I was in the kitchen: it had been a restless night with recurring gusts of wind rattling the doors and shutters. Stienie had not slept well, and Maans had called the old woman to come and take a look at her, which had left her very ill-humoured. The wind was howling mournfully in the chimney and rattling the windows, chasing the dust across the arid veld to swirl in the yard and be blasted against the window-panes; the weather was threatening, yet it did not rain, the veld as desolate as it had appeared for months. It must have been during the tenth month of Stienie’s pregnancy that I heard the scream from her bedroom that morning as I was stooping in front of the stove, and we had been waiting for so long that I pushed the kettle over the fire instinctively to boil the water, and turned to fetch the cloths we had prepared. While I was standing there, I heard old Tant Neeltjie’s voice in the voorhuis, however, and realised that the two of them were shouting at each other, the old woman from the voorhuis and Stienie from her bed, with Maans trying in vain to restore the peace. There was just enough time to send the servants out of the house so that they would not hear the old woman’s language before I went to Stienie, now screaming and sobbing uncontrollably while Tant Neeltjie stood in the voorhuis firing off curses at the door I had closed in her face.

I never found out what had taken place, for Stienie was too upset to speak coherently, and later it was impossible to find out — as a matter of fact, no one ever referred to it again and later it was as if nothing had ever happened — but Tant Neeltjie must have told her that morning that there was no baby, for afterwards the old woman declared that she had stayed there long enough and insisted that Maans take her to town. While he was still hesitating, for a storm appeared to be brewing, she gathered her things — the little Bible, the nightcap and the sewing-case — wrapped in the grain-bag she had arrived with and tied up with string, and sat waiting in the voorhuis, the bundle on her lap, so that there was nothing for it but to have the Cape cart inspanned. I just had time to tell the servants to prepare some padkos, as I had to remain with Stienie: Maans came to say goodbye, but the cart was at the kitchen door and the old woman had already climbed in, thus he had no choice but to leave. I remember how I stooped, the moist cloth in my hands, to steal a glance from under the low eaves, and through the billowing dust and bushes I saw horses and cart struggling against the wind, already almost invisible under the lowering sky; but then I had to attend to Stienie, for during the next few days she demanded all my attention.