The landscape surges in patterns of light and shade as the wind comes rolling over the ridges, and Sofie and Pieter laugh and call out to each other in words blown away by the wind — yes, Pieter, for Pieter was there too; how clearly I remember that. I am sitting on the ground beside Jacomyn, watching the baby asleep on the shawl she has spread out for him. “Where is Sofie?” I ask. “Never mind,” she answers distractedly, without raising her eyes. “Never mind, they are coming, they are coming.” I smell the air around us, sweet with the scent of wilde anys, and I notice the shrubs that have taken root in the clefts and the swaying white blooms of the spekbos on the ridges, that pale spring of grey and silver and white under a faded blue sky, with the water in the distant vlei glittering for a moment before growing dull once more as the entire landscape darkens under the billowing shadows that obscure the sun. That spring — yes, it was during that spring, the second spring, when Maans had already been born; I was mistaken. They are coming, they are coming. The wind shakes the branches of the renosterbos, the harpuisbos and the white blooms of the spekbos, and I get bored where I sit waiting with Jacomyn. For whom, for what? I have forgotten, for years I forgot, but now I am slowly beginning to remember again. They are coming. Pieter, my brother, in his shirtsleeves, laughing among the shrubs and bushes of the veld, and Sofie, laughing, her hair billowing around her head — it was during that spring that I saw them running through the drifting, rolling landscape, stumbling along the treacherous shadows, stumbling, falling and disappearing under the dark surface of the shadows. Did he come with us? But that is unlikely. Did he meet up with us somewhere, was he waiting for us; could it have been prearranged, and if so, how and where and when? They are coming, they are coming, Jacomyn says quietly, her head averted as she plays with pebbles and gravel where she sits waiting, and the air is sweet with the scent of wilde anys. There is so much I have forgotten, only to remember again now, to try and understand, so much I will never remember any more, so much I will never understand.
I jump up, I stumble through bushes and trip over rough, gnarled trunks, scraping my knees on rocks, shouting into the wind, groping, lost among the thickets and clefts of the dried-up fountains. Perhaps it is better not to remember it all, perhaps we are unable to endure the full burden of our memories. They slip, they slide and are lost to me. Under the ripples of shifting light and shadow they disappear, a bright wall of water separating them from me; uncomprehending, I stare down from the edge and see Sofie with her face upturned and her hair floating wide as she sinks down, see the brightness of Pieter’s white shirt in the intensifying darkness as he sinks down with arms outstretched to where my eye can no longer follow them. Their bodies, now weightless, are carried by the water into the depths, borne along the invisible stream. For a moment they turn towards each other in the swell — the pale faces with dilated eyes, the streaming hair, the outstretched arms; the surging water forces them together as in an embrace, as if in search of rescue, before they disappear together and, screaming, I jump up in my bed and recognise by the dim glow of the oil lamp my familiar room with the shutters closed against the night and Dulsie who has fallen asleep on the rug beside the bed where she is watching over me.
It is quiet, no sound can be heard in the emptiness of the night. Silence, darkness; wait for the cocks to start crowing in the dark, wait for the first greyness to become visible through the shutters, for the girl to wake up and stir and feel around to light the candle. Nothing.
That summer — I remember nothing; silence and darkness. The eagle’s feather in the sky, the vulture’s feather, the feather motionless in the sky. The jackal on the ridge, the wild cats emerging from the rocky clefts at night to attack the sheep flocks. The whitened bones of some animal on the rocks in the narrow ravine, or the sudden brightness of blood on a rock. Who heard the cry?
What more? I do not remember anything more about that summer, it is dark before my eyes, silence is all around me after the stream of memories that has engulfed me. The shot echoing among the cliffs, startling the chattering baboons, thundering back and forth among the cliffs, just about to die away when the boom of another rifle from an adjacent kloof starts up the echoes anew. In the house the women jump up from where they are sitting in the voorhuis and run outside, and I see the white knuckles of Sofie’s hand. But no, that was another time, and the hunters firing their rifles miles away in the kloof were out of earshot. There had been no shot anyway, it was that he had lost his footing, his foot on the rock, his head against the rock. I cannot remember any more; I do not know any more. I do not want to remember any more.
Wait; wait without thinking or forcing, hear the silence without listening, and stare wide-eyed into the dark. The night will pass; perhaps the night will pass without the need to remember. Wait.
Sofie’s hand, the knuckles white; Sofie raising her hand to touch the blood on her face; Sofie, her long hair screening her face from the candlelight. Did he strike her? How do I know this, and was there no one to intervene?
Do not try to remember. What do I know? Simple facts that may be accounted for simply, without trying to establish pattern, meaning or coherence, without searching for more, but even that is too much.
She was not happy with us or with Jakob, of course not, but how much did I ever really know about that, except for the chair overturning, the door being slammed or the angry voices in the other room, and who can say whether these things concerned Sofie and Jakob? I can still picture Sofie clearly with the blood on her face, but is it memory or imagination? The fields of spring flowers I remember, but there were many springtimes, and can I still distinguish between one year and another? That they fell, stumbled and sank down into the dark water, of course I never saw anything of the sort, but how can I distinguish between memory and imagination when one image is as clear to me as the other? Simple facts are no longer simple; every word, every image is loaded with further memories or deeper insights from which they can no longer be disentangled. If I have to remember then, if I am forced to give this account, where should I begin, and what should I mention, what omit? But I must begin.
Summer came and the land regained its usual greyness, the sunlight was brighter; of that summer I remember heat and dust, and in the vlei the clear water surrounded by reeds and bulrushes began to dwindle, leaving at first a ring of mud, trampled by the sheep that came to drink there, then drying up, gradually cracking and crumbling. It might have been any other summer, but I remember it because Sofie’s baby was still very young and his whining forms part of my memories: the plaintive wailing of the sickly child, and Jacomyn’s voice in the bedroom, hushing him, and the sound of her bare feet on the dung floor as she paced up and down. That year the lynxes were troublesome in the gorges, and one of the herdsmen brought a dead lamb that had fallen prey to one of them to the house to show Father, and then Father told Jakob and Pieter and Gert to take their rifles and go and shoot the creature, for his health was showing signs of failing, and he began to leave most of the work on the farm up to Jakob. They rode out that morning before daybreak, before I was up, and Father stayed at home. The sewing and the shiny needle in my hand, the wailing of the baby and the shuffling of Jacomyn’s feet, and the white knuckles of Sofie’s hand — but no, that was the winter when Pieter came walking back to the house alone across the snowfield, back from the dead. I am confused, and if my memory can deceive me like this, how can I trust it? Better to remain silent and wait, for the cock to crow, for daybreak. But I must remember.