What am I saying? Words keep running through my mind, and alone in the dark I am stringing together words I was not even aware I knew, and running off sentences in a way my slow tongue could never have managed before. But to what end, to what end?
Words are no longer of any use now, and the past is beyond redemption; if the girl on the cot at my feet should wake, she would distinguish no sound in the dark nor hear any movement, if she should get up to set the night-light burning once again, she would see nothing in the dim glow but the familiar room and the old woman in the bed, motionless against the stacked pillows, wide-eyed and awake. She sleeps unhindered, however, her breathing regular, and the darkness is on fire as Sofie dances before my eyes, flickering like a flame, radiant in her satin dress, black on black, veiled by the golden haze of the candlelight and the powdery dust, to the beat of fiddle and accordion, to the rhythm of stamping feet on the clay floor, like a relentless, insistent pulse. Sofie slender and straight in her black dress, and Pieter, my brother, facing her in the candlelight in the dark, the two of them together, flickering shadows black on black in the dark. The girl on the cot remains motionless.
We never entertained and we seldom visited the neighbouring farms when I was a child, but that New Year after Jakob’s wedding my parents held a dance on our farm, for with his marriage many things began to change even though the transformation did not last long; it was only many years later, when Maans came of age, that there was dancing on our farm again. When Jakob got married, however, a dance was given to celebrate the wedding and to welcome the new daughter-in-law and, I suppose, also to show the neighbours, look, this we have, so far have we come by scrimping and saving and planning, silently and resolutely, and now we can breathe more easily at last and look up, without having to defer to anyone, without having to rely on anyone, and inferior to no one; come and see. Am I doing you wrong, Mother? But you never said anything yourself, you were never prepared to explain, nor did you ever acknowledge the least obligation to explain or justify. Now it is too late and only I have remained to piece my bits and fragments together to discover for myself the pattern that emerges.
Thus at New Year there was dancing on our farm, as I have said, and for days, for weeks, our house was filled with bustle and something I might even describe as exhilaration, though perhaps I am thinking mostly of Sofie when I say this, for she was as exuberant as a child at the thought of merriment and people and music after the first months of isolation and silence she had experienced with us, laughing and gay in the dark house where we lived side by side in silence, dancing through the darkness like a flame, so that, in spite of my own shyness and reserve, I, too, was touched by her happiness. The musicians had already arrived and were exchanging banter with the servants in the kitchen, and now and again one of them played a quick tune, a fragment of a waltz or seties on the fiddle or accordion, that echoed through the shadowy house provocatively and defiantly; outside Pieter called out that the first guests were arriving. The sun had not yet gone down, but inside the bedroom a candle had to be lit, and Sofie turned to me from the small looking-glass over which she had stooped to pin up her hair; out of the gloom, out of the shadows, out of the dark she rose up towards me like a swimmer from the dark waters of a pool, entangled in the heavy, gleaming folds of her black satin gown, her wedding gown, that she was wearing here with us for the first time tonight, and she reached out to me with both hands. “Sussie, you have to help me,” she whispered, her eyes shining with excitement, as if she wanted to share a secret with me, but she only wanted me to fasten the beads around her neck, beads as black as her dress, unexpectedly radiating faint colours when I held them up to the candlelight. “These are rubies,” she told me, still whispering as if it were a secret we were sharing, and my hands were trembling so much that I struggled to fasten the tiny hook. Silently I touched the dark, shiny gemstones and the dark, smooth fabric of her gown, for such things I had never seen before, and I looked at the rest of her finery, the narrow gold bracelet and the little gold ring with the heart. Sofie’s dark head bent over the candle-flame and the pulsing of the restless music through the house and Gert calling outside and Pieter who came running across the yard, laughing with excitement, and the vast, open land out there, widespread, basking in the last rays of the sun, though here inside the house it had long been dark, the rolling veld with the shrubs and rocky ridges aflame in the late light and in the distance the dust of the vehicles on their way here.
We did not have many neighbours we could invite, here along the edge of the plateau in the sparsely populated Roggeveld with its scattered homesteads, but neighbourliness was neighbourliness, and those who were able to ride over, did so, amazed, uncertain and inquisitive about this sudden hospitality on our side; from Kanolfontein and Driefontein and Jakkalsfontein and Gunsfontein the people came, and their carts stood outspanned against the kraal wall. The house was filled with people and noise and activity, the golden glow of candlelight filled it; the women with their tiny glasses of sweet wine took their places on chairs against the walls of the voorhuis and outside in the dark one could hear the laughter of the men where they gathered around the brandy cask.
I remember Mother that evening, with shining eyes and a rare blush on her cheek-bones, rigid, tense and watchful, as if the arrival of the strangers posed a threat to her, and this rare show of friendship exposed her to danger, but nevertheless also proud of her home and the hospitality it could offer, so proud that, with all her strenuous efforts to be gracious and friendly, she was almost defiant towards her guests. I remember Mother, and Sofie in her glistening black gown, the focal point of that entire gathering, obscured for a moment as the candle-flames flickered in the draught or people moved past the light, but then glowing before my eyes once more in the diffused light. I noticed the mistrustful neighbours lined up against the wall studying her, and the jealousy of the country girls, huddling together shyly in their Sunday clothes; I saw the eyes of the men weighing her, though I did not recognise or understand that expression, and no matter how incomprehensible it has remained to me after all the years, I have seen it often enough since to know the words people use to describe it: wonder, admiration, lust and desire.