Did winter come early that year, or had our customary departure for the Karoo been delayed for some reason? We left home in cold and billowing mist that cloaked the escarpment, and we descended down Vloksberg Pass into depths we could not see. Our small procession of wagons, riders and sheep flocks descended almost blindly, following the rocky track along the edge of the cliffs, as if we were disappearing into the churning white waters of a drift, never to reappear again. How do I know it was that winter, the winter after Jakob’s marriage; what gives me the right to be so certain? It could just as well have been any other winter of my youth, with the straggling trek moving down the pass to the Karoo while I stayed behind for a moment, my shawl wrapped tightly around me against the cold and wind, watching for a sign that the mist might be opening somewhere, that in our descent we had moved far enough down the mountain to catch a glimpse through an opening in the mist of the Karoo landscape in the golden sunlight down below. The last lagging sheep had already been chased ahead, the last herdsman had disappeared ahead of me down the track, the last sound, that otherwise would have echoed so clearly here in the cliffs, had been muffled by the billowing clouds; for a moment I was alone, and suddenly I was fearful, aware of the baboons on the cliffs and the wild cats in the ravines, aware of every other invisible threat that might be lurking in the fog, and I turned around. My foot caught on a stone and I heard it roll away and dislodge other stones until the rattle of falling rocks was absorbed by the muffling fog; and I fled, stumbling over the loose stones and rocky ledges, down the slope, following the direction in which the wagons had disappeared, blindly through the fog along the edge of the invisible abyss, until the rear end of our trek became dimly visible ahead of me, the wagons slowly feeling their way through the mist. I can remember no other anxiety from my childhood quite like that unexpected moment during our trek to the Karoo, that first winter after Sofie had come to us as a bride.
In the little school that Sofie had attended at Worcester, she had learnt different kinds of needlework and embroidery, and I think Mother expected her to teach me now as well, but Sofie was not really interested, nor did she have the patience, and even Mother had to acknowledge my awkwardness with the needle, so that nothing ever came of the plan. She had also had some piano instruction, but who had a piano in those parts, and so that, too, was of no use, though sometimes when she was busy on her own she sang some of the songs she had learned at school.
Thus all that remained of her education was the few books she had brought along in her trunk and sometimes took out to read, seated against the wall near the window because of the poor light. When she saw I was interested in her books and could even read from them a little, she laughed and asked who had taught me: “Pieter,” I answered timidly, for even to Sofie I did not want to speak of Meester, and in a way it was true, after all, for Pieter had helped me too. After that, Sofie began to read with me from her books and, though Mother regarded the books with suspicion and did not approve of Sofie’s reading, so that she was quick to interrupt it with some instruction or other, she did realise that it was useful, and so my occasional lessons with Sofie began. In usefulness I myself was not interested, but to be involved with her in this activity, shoulder to shoulder and heads bowed over the pages together in the feeble light, that was good for me and, anyway, the books she had brought along were story books that I could understand better and enjoy more than those I had read with Meester. Later she also gave me writing lessons: there must have been a lot she did not know, though she did know a little Dutch and a little English, but nevertheless her knowledge was greater than mine and she helped me as far as she could. In the monotony and isolation of her life with us, the lessons must have seemed a welcome respite to her, even almost like a little game with a girl only a few years her junior: I can remember that there was sometimes a great deal of laughter where we sat together with our heads bowed over the pages. It often happened then that Pieter would be attracted by our high spirits too and, in spite of his duties on the farm, he would manage to be somewhere in the vicinity when I had my lessons and he would be drawn in until Mother discovered him inside the house.
It was after we had returned from the Karoo that these lessons in the dimly-lit voorhuis began, during Sofie’s first spring with us: the slate-grey land had regained some colour in the warmth of the sun, the dams in the marshlands glittered in the sunlight and the rocky ridges were fleetingly suffused with the brightness of flowers. The remoteness, the distance, the sunlight and the glittering of the water beckoned to us all day where we were busy inside the house, visible in fragments through the small windows set deep in the walls, and sometimes when Mother was not near to see it and forbid it, Sofie would call Jacomyn and pull me along by the hand, and then we would leave the books or the sewing and slip out into the sunshine of the day. Far off in the distance I can still see us in the wideness of that spring landscape, the two women, the glitter of the water behind them, and Sofie unbuttoning her bodice in the heat, laughing and breathless, and Jacomyn, her headscarf tied around the wild flowers we had picked, her dark hair gleaming in the sun. Sofie and I together at one end of the table in the voorhuis where I was busy with my writing exercises, the front door left ajar to let in the light and the brightness of the landscape outside, with Pieter facing us, sprawled lazily, elbows on the table, teasing, or trying to distract us, cutting a quill pen and passing it to Sofie across the table. The water glitters in the sun and for a moment my eyes, accustomed to the dark house, are dazzled. Never had I experienced a spring as beautiful as that one, I must admit here at the end of my life, that spring before Maans was born.
Of the books Sofie and I read together like that, I understood very little at first, but Pieter borrowed them from her, and it was a secret between the three of us that had to be kept from Mother. She never caught him reading, for she would have taken the book from him and she might even have given him a thrashing, grown-up as he was, but she did know about it, just as she knew about everything else. “He’s lying about somewhere outside again, reading,” she exploded towards Father when some or other chore had been neglected or overlooked, and the words were also a reproach aimed at Sofie whom she never accused directly. “You must speak, husband, you must speak!” she cried out with her usual vehemence, but Father just smiled and stroked his beard defensively as was his habit. When the two boys got into an argument, Jakob sneered at Pieter’s book-learning and his preference for the women’s company, but Pieter only retreated into an unwonted silence and made no reply.