Ma kept a couple of hundred merinos and a few Jersey cows on Grootmoedersdrift. There was a foreman on the farm, OuKarel Okkenel, of the Suurbraak Okkenels, and his half-grown son Dawid, who also lived on the farm. OuKarel was a widower, a respectable man, distant descendant of the Scottish mechanics who came out in 1817 under Benjamin Moodie. OuKarel sowed a few morgen of wheat for Ma every year for a share. She was worried that the farm was being neglected. After Pa inherited his land and they went to farm on Goedbegin, they used to go and check every week that everything was running smoothly on Grootmoedersdrift. Ever since you were small, she and Pa drove over the mountain at shearing time and lambing time and harvest time, and stayed on in the old homestead for weeks on end to keep an eye and to take things in hand. Often it was only you and Pa, those were your best times, he taught you opera arias and took you on expeditions in the veld. Your father with his long stride and his perfect hearing, you couldn’t believe that he had turned into the lopsided old gent with the shuffling gait.
They’re getting old, you said to Jak, they can no longer keep crossing the mountain and manage two farms. We’re getting married at the right time. We have to take over the wheat farming from the Okkenels, the local market is famished for fine white flour now after the war, we have to extend the sheep and cattle herds, there’s excellent grazing next to the river for a dairy herd, we must make of Grootmoedersdrift what it can be, a textbook example of mixed farming, we have to live up to the name.
You moved your hand and massaged the inside of his thigh.
You’re driving me mad, Jak said. He squirmed in his seat and accelerated even more.
Don’t get carried away, darling, stay on the road, you said.
He tried to keep himself in check. He shook his head, brought up last night’s conversation.
Lynx-hide thongs! What kind of story was that last night, he asked, I hope you don’t take after that mother of yours too much, you’ll finish a man off.
You laughed, you pinched the soft flesh of his inner thigh.
Well, I don’t know who you take after, you teased back. You took a deep breath and said it, you were shy, but you said it.
You’re very close to finished before I’ve even started, was what you said. With your eyes you gestured towards his fly.
You knew what the effect would be. He was the kind who liked off-colour comments. At times he said things to you that made you blush, but you never went too far when you were petting. You were a virgin and that was your price.
Good heavens, Milla, Jak exclaimed, tell me more!
There’s a sentinel before my mouth, you teased.
Just you wait, Jak said, you’ll end up with the sentinel in your sweet-talking mouth.
You weren’t altogether sure what he meant but you laughed along with him.
Jak was right about your mother. She had finished off your father. He’d become ever more silent with the years. Must have been ill already the evening of the engagement. You could tell from his reticence while your mother took out the maps and spread the papers of Grootmoedersdrift on the dining room table. It had been her ancestral land for generations back in her mother’s line, from the Steyn and the Spies lines. They were the ones, according to her, who planted the wild fig avenue there and traced the foundations of the homestead with lynx-hide ropes.
You don’t throw away your birthright, your mother said to Jak, that which your ancestors built up in the sweat of their brow, that you look after and that you live up to.
Yes, you said and winked at your father. You knew he knew, like you, what her next sentence would be.
Those were people who had to hack bushes and stack stones. There was no time for sweet talk and twaddle, you said, all three of you.
It was your mother’s favourite expression.
You could see Jak glancing around, puzzled, not knowing what was happening.
It’s in Kamilla’s blood, you must realise, Jak, she steamed ahead. Her great-great-grandmother farmed there all alone for thirty years after her husband’s death, way before the days of Hendrik Swellengrebel. There was a woman who could get a grip and hit home, blow for blow. She fixed Jak with a glare like a bayonet. If you can’t do that, young man, then you’d better stand aside because then you won’t do, then you’re just a nuisance to others.
You were ashamed. You twined your fingers through Jak’s and leant over him, so that your breasts rested on his shoulder while you were pretending to study the map. You knew the map by heart. Ever since you were a little girl your mother had slid it out of its long sheath to show you the farm that would be yours one day.
Jak heard her out meekly, his face expressionless. Now, as you entered the pass, he was openly mocking.
Once upon a time, long ago, when the world was young, in the time of the Lord Swellengrebel, he commenced, there was a great-great-grandmother Spies, a boer woman without equal. .
He changed down to a lower gear on the uphill.
. . And she called her farm Grootmoedersdrift after herself and laid out its boundaries with, can you guess with what? With lynx-hide thongs!
How does that sound for a beginning? He looked at you.
I particularly liked the bit about the woman who could get a grip and hit home, blow for blow. Tell me more about that.
You started rubbing his groin. The first time you’d ever done a thing like that. Jak lost his head completely, caught off guard, he took the pass as if were a race track. The car kicked up stones. It was still the old pass, in 1946, with narrow hairpins, nowhere a kerb. Every now and again Jak would glance at you and you glanced back. If you had so many things in your head, you wondered to yourself, what must he not make of it all?
Slow down, Jak, you said, it’s a pass.
What will you give me?
Anything you ask.
Don’t you know?
I can guess, you said. You tugged open the buckle of his belt.
He looked at you in surprise, groaned.
So, and what are you going to give me in exchange? You wanted to know.
Anything you ask.
And don’t you know?
I’m not as clever as you.
Well, in the first place you must slow down.
But you’re making me want to get somewhere very fast!
You removed your hand. He took it back and you resisted, but not too much, so that he could put it where he wanted it.
Right, I’ll slow down, he said, and in any case, it looks as if you’ve got a watermelon lorry on your side.
Some way ahead on the pass, with a long line of cars following, a lorry filled with spanspek and watermelon was trundling along.
No, it’s you who has the watermelon on your side, you said, and pulled open his fly and put your hand inside.
My God, woman, Jak said, and threw back his head and closed his eyes for a moment.
Keep your eyes on the road, De Wet, you said.
That’s what you said, but you thought: I’m the one who directs everything, the roughly ranked rock faces, the dark waterway far below, the curves in the road, the clouds far above.
So what problems are these that your mother talks of, there on Grootmoedersdrift? Jak asked with a charged voice, and swallowed.
He shook his head as if he were seeing stars. You had a firm grip on him, long-term promises in your grasp.
Tulips, you said, and sat forward so that you could work your hand in under his testicles. After that you could never get enough of it. The contrast between the silky shifting balls and the immense length of the erect flesh above. You were fascinated by it, surprised that you knew what to do.
There are wild tulips next to the river, and if the cows eat them and they drink water afterwards, then they die as if you’d fed them arsenic. They’re little bulbs. You have to take them out by hand. If you plough them they just multiply.