And Pieter? Men do not cope well with reality, and Pieter least of alclass="underline" it was always Jakob or Gert who slaughtered for us and Jakob who took the lead when the men went hunting for red jackal or wild cat, and that day Pieter fled the house and did not come back inside in spite of the bitter cold but, wrapped in a jackal-skin kaross, he paced up and down in the distance, far enough so that he could no longer hear Sofie screaming. At twilight her screams at last became fainter, intermingled with feeble squawks and the voices of the women attending the birth, and Mother entered the kitchen to fetch a candle, and told me that Sofie had a boy. In the pale grey twilight of the winter evening I ran out to tell Pieter so that he could come inside and I remember the razor-sharp cold on my face and the swirling silver snow in the air, the fine white shimmer of snow on Pieter’s hair and on the jackal-skin around his shoulders as he came inside to the candlelight and the fire.
Thus Jakob had a son, that squawking little creature in the crib beside Sofie’s bed. That winter in the Karoo he was christened Hermanus after his grandfather, and he was called Maans; but he would be the only grandchild, and there was never any heir other than he.
After the confinement Sofie was eager to get to the Karoo, and Mother, too, probably wanted to escape from the Roggeveld as soon as possible before winter really set in and we were snowed in. Thus, as soon as it became possible for Sofie to travel, Pieter took us down in the wagon, with Sofie and her baby cocooned in down quilts and pillows as we jolted from one rocky ledge to the next, along the edge of the cliff.
Nearly every year of my youth and most years afterwards I travelled to the Karoo with my family in that way, at first down the slopes of Vloksberg Pass, and later, when the road had been built, by way of Verlatekloof, initially with Maans as a newborn baby in Jacomyn’s arms, and later with the little boy running behind the wagon, or as a young man, helping to herd the sheep, or as an adult, taking responsibility for the trek himself. Why then do I remember this particular trek as the last one, while in truth it was one of the earliest in a long sequence through my entire life? Down the pass with Pieter and Sofie and her baby, over rocks wet with rain, fine, blustering hail lashing our faces, to the Karoo where birds twitter in the winter sunshine and streams surge down cliffs and crevices, heralding the rains that have fallen on the heights above, where waterfalls cascade from one ledge to the next and the day is filled with the rushing of water and the grinding and milling of the pebbles in its course.
It was late afternoon when the small trek arrived at our winter quarters in the Karoo, and I jumped from the wagon as it halted and saw Jakob walking slowly towards us through the veld, rhythmically beating his horsewhip against his leg. Pieter lifted Sofie from the wagon in his arms, while Jacomyn followed with the child, but Jakob did not approach to greet his wife or to look at his child, and we remained waiting beside the wagon as if we had arrived among strangers where the reception was uncertain and the welcome dubious. Where could Mother, who had come with us, have been and why was Father not there to welcome us? I remember the Karoo scent of herbs and bushes and grass, the twittering of the birds, and the rumble of milling rocks churned up by the floodwaters. What was the nature of the change that had taken place, so that nothing was the same after this? According to what pattern, or rules, the memory decides what to retain and what to discard, I cannot say: I remember Jacomyn climbing down from the wagon on our arrival in the Karoo with the baby on her arm, the way she ducked her head with the gleaming black hair from which the scarf had slipped from under the tented hood and with one hand lifted her dress before her feet; after all the years I still remember that insignificant, incidental gesture and I see clearly before my eyes a woman who is long dead, but what I want to know now remains hidden from me, and I can only feel around in the darkness of the past for the splinters that may help me restore the pattern.
The last trek to the Karoo I called it, even though forty or fifty others followed in years to come, and so it was, for that winter something ended, and on our return to the Roggeveld in spring everything was different. Sofie spent only two springtimes with us, the spring after her wedding and the one when Maans was a baby, but in my memory they have remained distinct, though it would be difficult for me to describe the difference between them. That she had new responsibilities and duties was not the reason, for I do not believe she took much notice of the child, and she never seemed to be bothered by the way Mother took charge of him: she never showed the least inclination to resist Mother’s possessiveness, and otherwise he was left in Jacomyn’s care, and Jacomyn had very few duties in the house other than to look after him. Mother and Jacomyn and old Dulsie fought silently and wordlessly over the possession of that squealing little bundle who now formed part of our family, and each was determined to stake her own claim and to stand upon her rights, while Sofie held herself aloof from the battle. It was Jacomyn, however, who raised Maans as a baby, and later I; for a few years it was as if he were my child, until Mother appropriated him completely and he finally married the woman she had selected for him. Thus that victory was Mother’s too.
That spring, I might say, it was already as if Sofie was no longer one of us. What had happened that winter in the Karoo? Nothing that I can remember, nothing I ever knew about, and perhaps no more than the usual visits back and forth of neighbours and acquaintances, the music and the dancing. Sofie’s family and friends were also there, of course, and for a few months she was back in the world she knew. I remember the luxurious warmth and the rush of the swollen fountains and streams, the boisterous and excited shouting and the music from beyond the thorn trees — it could have been that year or just as well any other, because that was the way the winters in the Karoo usually passed. To us, however, it was never more than a delay and an interruption, and the annual return to the Roggeveld was a homecoming every time, so predictable that, when we delayed, the sheep found their own way to the familiar heights without waiting for us: upward through the narrow shadow of the kloof to the pale undulations of the plateau with its constant threat of unseasonable frost or snow, the glittering of the water in the dams, and the dark house with its sturdy walls. For us the return was a homecoming after every absence but for Sofie, could it ever have been anything but exile?
It was late that year before spring finally arrived, and long after our return there was still frost. Sofie usually stayed inside, as she had done during the last days of her pregnancy, and our lessons were resumed, with the exception that I had suddenly been seized by a burning desire to unravel the secrets of the letters and to master the contents of the books, and to be able, in my childish eyes, to read and write as fluently as Pieter and she. Perhaps in my own way I also had something of Mother’s burning ambition, or perhaps I cherished the idle hope of having my progress rewarded with her approval. Or perhaps I merely hoped to be able to enter Sofie and Pieter’s world in that way, and to participate in what they shared, and from which I was excluded, something I could only associate with the reading and writing in the voorhuis, as I could find no other explanation for it. As usual, Pieter was often there when I had my lessons, teasing or distracting us, or arguing playfully with Sofie about the pronunciation, the meaning or the spelling of a word, until she herself began to laugh. Frowning and determined, with ink stains on my fingers, I bent over the stained paper, and when I looked up I saw them as they sat teasing each other across the table or conferring over a book. Heads close together, they spelt out the foreign text and followed the words with fingers accidentally touching, in the dimly-lit room where there was no observer but me, a child bent over her task, too busy to take notice and too young to understand.