Congratulations, my boy, he said to Jak, you’re sounding a new note here on the farm. But you could hear his heart was not in it. ’48 that was, the year before his death.
Jak imported a big New Holland grain drier from America and made doubly sure that the wheat did not rot in the bag. He brought in five bumper crops in consecutive years, bought vehicles and implements, demolished all the old sheds from your mother’s time and built big new structures with sliding doors and shiny steel roofs, and bought new stud animals to improve the cattle and sheep herds.
So what do you say now, Milla my wife? he asked. Now it’s only you who must show that you can increase abundantly.
He tapped against your stomach as one would tap against the glass of a silent clock to see if the hands won’t move.
was that the beginning? the first tangible beginning of it? good friday nineteen ninety-three the ewes of easter in the green on mountains and in dales waiting for the dropping of the lambs the distant singing of sheep in the night while the flock increases silently and in the mornings the first twins of april are standing knee-deep in the pasture in the beneficent oats stand on first legs in the underground clover stand on tiny amber paws under a mizzle under a general muzzle of blessing muzzle of bounty huddled against the slopes of hills stand tottering along with the cranes in the vleis and what is it that pricks in my fingers? i stammer i think with being undone in the lambing time it is autumn the leaves are falling but this time it is different as if i am big with something or sick with that melancholy that sickness insinuates before it like a foot my foot is heavy i falter my hand is heavy all of my right side with my lips i want to say easter agaat it’s easter the year of our lord ninety-three let us bake a cake an easter cake in honour of the lambing time yolk and white I separate the eggs and seven fall seven eggs on the ground a general egg-fall I am unhandy senile a sign of the times a melancholy of the eastertide you break the eggs gaat let me sit at the edge of the table so that i can slice jewels for the king’s crown the pineapple the cherries and the figs red and green and yellow the jewels and shards of angelica.
4 July 1960 ten o’clock morning
Specially went into town heavy of body as I am to go & arrange A.’s savings book at the post office spotted my chance when the coast was clear & put hr baptism certificate & hr inoculation records polio & diphtheria & pox in a velvet drawstring-bag & went & tucked it in under hr underclothes in the top shelf of hr wardrobe.
Checked everything once again more nobody could do & more would be wrong. J. perhaps right on this how would I know. A. mustn’t at this stage get accustomed to more he says then you just get trouble later A. will never make trouble I say J. says it’s not she it’s the other workers who’ll make the trouble because she has privileges that they don’t have. I ask how? you never know the country is restless the kffrs are already growing very brazen in the North & he doesn’t want to see a bunch of brazen htnts in the South it will be a horse of a different colour we don’t want to prepare a Sharpeville for ourselves here in the Overberg he says. I say the undrprvlgd we will always have with us. It’s no use our blinding ourselves to their need.
Beatrice is coming over to tea. Time rests too heavily on her hands the woman. Can’t she understand I’m busy? Truly don’t feel like sanctimonious prattle.
After lunch
This morning a long time in the outside room. Checked everything again if I hadn’t forgotten something.
Seven bloomers maybe two more? in case of accident & then had a thought spread undersheet & remade the bed remember how copiously one can bleed when you’re young.
Curtain in front of the clothes rail doesn’t pull nice & smoothly over the steel wire rubbed with candlewax so that rings don’t make the scraping sound put the candlewax on shelf above wash-table so that A. can re-do it will wear off quickly curtain will just have to be closed always. I had to stop Jak he actually wanted to nail shut the window says he doesn’t want to be confronted with a servant-girl’s bed every time he comes out of the kitchen door it’s not a good idea either that the other workers see how luxuriously A. has it here with the whitefolk.
Rather said nothing about its being my plan for a long time to build new houses for the workers. First for Dawid & them the hovel in which they live is still from Ma’s time & the walls crumbling badly roof leaks & and there’s a whole string of little ones as well from Dawid’s cousins who materialised suddenly. Everything gradually D. will just have to make a plan himself in the meantime will give a few sheets of corrugated iron frm the shearers’ cooking huts. Don’t know what when they come again next season sufficient unto the day.
Now everybody must first just get used to the situation with A. in the backyard.
Before supper
Strange feeling can’t stop writing about the outside room I keep on thinking of something else to add. This mrning I opened the Zion bible on the crate next to the bed & then had another thought & went & fetched the crocheted bookmark from Ma from my Bible placed it in Psm 23 the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.
Can’t stop scrabbling around there just like a broody hen really. Put a twig of fennel in the little vase then the smell suddenly made me cry must be the hormones that are mixed up. Tears idle tears I know not what they mean.
Rinsed the kettle & boiled a bit of water on the two-plate stove. Suddenly felt I wanted to have a cup of tea there. Wanted to test A.’s mug & taste the rusks I baked I made the rooibos sweet as she would like it & dunked the rusk good batch nice rich buttermilk. Tin mug too hot to hold burnt my fingers waited for it to cool & took all A.’s other reading matter out of the crate where I had put it away & so read the introduction by Her Honour Mrs Dr Verwoerd in the embroidery book & must say was really quite inspiring: The book conceived in love for the development of the nation & the homely atmosphere that embroidery creates because it’s the mark of a culturally conscious nation underlined the words and wrote in the front: May this book provide you with much pleasure yet in the empty hours on Gdrift. It looks so dry but what else could I say? Then had another idea. Went inside and got a pencil and knife to sharpen it and empty notebook from J.’s office wrote in capitals on the cover: My own Patterns and Designs had to press hard because the cover was of glossy paper and the pencil wouldn’t bite properly and then put away the embroidery book again in the crate with the notebook on top.
The old FAK Songbook cheered me up a bit. Softly so that nobody could hear me I sat there in the back & sang songs to myself. The bridge on our farm. On the death of an owl. On my old tin guitar. By the old millstream. Will it give her comfort too? The idea that she will sit on her own in the back & sing. So then I put the songbook away again because then I just wanted to cry again.