I forgot that he could play the violin, but now I hear again that plaintive, lilting melody coming from the kitchen where the servants sat in front of the fire in the evenings. I remember Mother glancing up at the sound, frowning, for she probably found it improper so shortly after Jakob’s death, but as far as I know she never mentioned it, and neither did Father; us women in the voorhuis in our black dresses around the single candle burning on the table, with Father who had fallen asleep in his armchair, groaning now and then with the gout, and that doleful music in the kitchen. As I remember, Pieter seldom joined us in the evenings, preferring the company of the servants in the kitchen or disappearing to his room outside, and during this time I also liked to slip away to the kitchen whenever I could, to the smouldering fire and the idle chatter and gossip of Pieter and the servants, the insinuations I could not understand and the sudden outbursts of pent-up emotion that I found equally incomprehensible, Pieter and Gert — no, it was Jakob and Gert between whom there was ongoing animosity and jealousy, and yet it is Pieter and Gert that I suddenly remember, their hands at each other’s throats, throttling each other, with old Dulsie seated at the hearth, laughing at the spectacle. What happened and who separated them? Jakob or Pieter? Jakob, I say, and yet my memory insists on seeing Pieter there. “Hotnot, take back what you have said!” — “White man, take your hands off me!” They were arguing about a rifle, for Gert had used Pieter’s rifle without permission and Pieter accused him of breaking the cocking-piece, and all evening they sat in the firelight, provoking each other with accusations and reproaches: “Who was the one that broke Jakob’s rifle?” one finally snarled at the other. Jakob’s rifle that Father had bought in Worcester for his confirmation, the rifle that was found snapped and broken where he had fallen on the rock and plunged into the crevice: yes, it was indeed Pieter and Gert who sat talking together that evening in the kitchen, but who spoke the words that set them at each other’s throats, and what did they mean? By that time Jakob was already dead.
Sometimes Sofie still walked in the veld and sometimes Jacomyn went along with the baby; Sofie with the bodice of her black mourning dress unbuttoned so that her pale neck showed. I am mistaken, I am still mistaken, trying to force the wrong splinters together to form a pattern: it was during this time, after Jakob’s death, how else would I remember it like that, with Sofie’s pale skin against the blackness of the mourning attire, and Jacomyn with her face averted from me. “Where is Sofie?” “Never mind, they are coming, they are coming.” It was not the spring, it was the summer after Jakob’s death that I remember, with Sofie in her black dress, lost in the swells of the shifting shadows over the veld, sinking down into the depths with streaming hair, and vanishing into the dark where only Pieter’s white shirt still flashes for a moment. But the flowers that I remember just as clearly? Summer and spring flow together and one year passes into another, and no certainty remains.
Sofie’s face, veiled by her hair, Pieter’s face upturned for a moment to the surface to catch the light; their expressions are grim and they are not laughing any more, their faces set. That I remember, disjointed, drifting images that cannot be captured between the fingers or linked in any way. The dams flashing in the spring sunlight, the brightness of the veld like a gleaming silver lake, and the silver moonlight in which the wide landscape lies undisturbed. I am confused again and I hesitate, uncertain. What is it that struggles to be released from my memory? Sofie’s face veiled by her long hair in the candlelight, a deeper and more motionless silence and the flame of the candle-stub burning motionlessly in the bowl before it is suddenly extinguished and silver moonlight spills over the floor. Voices in another room, the words inaudible, or perhaps kept low on purpose so as not to be heard.
I do not wish to remember any more
Silence. If only I could sleep, if I could die, but neither is possible: this is dying, but not yet death; I lie awake and waiting in the sleeping house, defenceless against thoughts and memories and the inexorable obligation to report and to remember. Who would ever have thought it possible that I could remember so much, that, unwillingly and under protest, I could recall so much in a single night?
Here, in this room where I am lying now, I also slept as a child; it has been my room all my life, except during the years when I lived in the town house, first with Mother and later on my own; until Maans built the new house with its wooden floors and fireplaces and wallpaper and we all moved there, Stienie’s house where I never felt at home, not even in my own room. This is my room; strange how it turned out that I was carried from the new house to be brought back here to die. I still remember the heavy silence within the shelter of the thatched roof and the thick walls and the uneven dung floor: over there is the window with its shutter closed against the night, and there the door to the voorhuis; on the other side of this wall Mother and Father are asleep in the big old four-poster, and in the kitchen Dulsie has spread her bedding in front of the hearth. Nothing in this sheltering dark is uncertain, and when I awake during the night, I am aware of that; drowsily I lie for a moment, cherishing the feeling of safety, and then I doze off again quickly and effortlessly. The small, secret night noises are barely discernible, the rustling of a mouse behind a chest, or a bat in the loft, and the call of some nocturnal animal far away in the ridges, the sudden frightened bleating of a lamb caught by a jackal, or a steenbok surprised by a lynx. In the shadows of the ridges the lynx pounces on its prey, and far away in the night a scream has died away even before I can turn over and fall asleep again, the carefree, deep sleep of a child. Are you asleep, Sussie? I do not know any more, scarcely aware of the whispered question, of the rustle of a woman’s dress. A hinge creaks, someone stumbles on the uneven floor, and for a moment nothing stirs — was that what woke me, or was it the flickering of a candle-flame against my eyelids?
It was Sofie’s voice here in my room, but what was she doing here? That it was here, I know for certain, for there was the door to the voorhuis and there the window overlooking the yard and the outbuildings. Sofie untied her hair as if preparing for bed, and the long, dark hair tumbled down around her face like a veil as she bent over the candle to blow it out. Are you asleep, Sussie? The house is quiet: behind the chests, between the rafters, in the thatch of the roof nothing is astir now; no nocturnal creature is calling on the ridges. I turn over and sink back into sleep.
Why would I imagine this, or with what could I possibly be confusing it? She blows out the candle, and I turn over in the dark, I sink back into sleep, and am called back by the light on my eyelids; bewildered and only partly aware of my surroundings, I perceive the brightness of the moonlight falling into the room and spilling over the floor where the shutter has been opened. Why would I imagine something like that? She blows out the candle and darkness shrouds the room, darkness shrouds the sleeping house; the shutter swings open on its hinges almost soundlessly, and the moonlight slips over the window-sill and spills over the dung floor of my room. The moon is full, and it is a brightness like daylight that makes me stir uneasily in my sleep without awakening fully. I see the bright square of the window and a dark figure appearing outside, etched against the light, and I see him hoisting himself up over the window-sill and swinging himself over swiftly, before the shutter is closed and everything is dark once more; I hear the intruder dropping down lightly and the rustle of Sofie’s dress, but I know there is no reason for anxiety or concern, even if I do not understand what is happening, for in that moment when the shutter was open, dazed and sleepily, through eyes half-shut, I recognised Pieter.