“The black horse and the grey,
o they have run away
I seek them in the mountains,
But they are in the vlei …”
He is teasing me, I thought, though he did not chase me away impatiently like Jacomyn or Dulsie, and his voice was not unkind. He said no more, however, though I waited for a long time, and only when I turned to go back to the house, did I hear him again, singing softly.
“The sorrow and the pain,
o the sorrow and the pain.
The herb to cure it grows beside
The foundation, not the plain.”
I stood listening as if I expected him to say more, but it was just one of the songs and rhymes that Gert was always making up as he worked, and as I crossed the yard back to the house, I could still hear him singing softly. During this time, with Jakob dead, Pieter gone and Father absent, it fell to Gert to manage most of the work on the farm and so he was often in the yard and in the kitchen without fear of being chased away by Mother. Perhaps his new standing had gone to his head, for I remember him being more high-spirited than usual, and whenever he was in the vicinity, he could be heard singing or humming to himself. Once I came upon him and Jacomyn behind the kraal wall, standing close together in intimate conversation, Jacomyn with her glistening black hair combed up high and her bright floral shawl with the long fringes wrapped around her shoulders as if it were a festive occasion. When they saw me, they seemed alarmed, but only until they recognised me, for I was only a child and held no threat to them; neither did I ever tell anyone about finding them there.
During this time of silence and solitude I sought the company of the servants more and more often. Where else could I turn? Sofie was gone, Pieter was gone, and even Father with whom I sometimes spent time, had said farewell wordlessly and left. Thus, whenever possible, I crawled into a corner of the kitchen, where Dulsie put up with my presence. As I have said, Gert was often indoors during this time and when the child was asleep, Jacomyn joined the others in front of the fire and, forced together like that by loneliness, their individual grudges and grievances were often forgotten for a while and they would talk and tease and scold, without noticing me. “When the master comes back,” Dulsie sometimes mumbled to herself, unhappy about something that had gone wrong on the farm, or the winter trek to the Karoo that had been delayed too long; and once, “When Pieter comes back”, so that I looked up at the mention of that name I had not heard since he disappeared so inexplicably from our midst. Then Gert laughed where he was drinking his coffee in front of the fire. “That will not happen soon, old woman,” he said. “The riem has not yet been cut that is long enough to catch those two.” “I don’t know about that,” Dulsie answered peevishly, drawing at her pipe. “Sometimes I feel I could reach them in an afternoon if my knees were not so stiff.” I sat in the shadows in the corner of the hearth, and Jacomyn, who was kneeling in front of me to warm the child’s milk, suddenly looked up as if she had been startled by something. For a moment it was quiet in the kitchen. “Then you’ll have to go quickly if you still want to catch them, old woman,” Gert said quietly, “and be careful that you don’t step into a porcupine-burrow and break your neck”. “I won’t be the first one to break my neck,” she snapped, and he swore and took his hat and went out to his sleeping place: the ceasefire here was never more than conditional, and at any moment it might break down into attack and defense. Which two, I wondered, when they had been talking about Pieter? But after that when I thought of Pieter and Sofie, I always saw them together, two horses galloping away through the vlei where the light flashed on the glittering water among the reeds, galloping away from us across the veld, together.
And then one day — it must have been weeks later — Father came back, alone, and Gert came running to hold his horse and to help him dismount and Mother came out of the house to support him. He greeted us, but said nothing, and he and Mother went into the bedroom and closed the door and it was a long time before Mother called Dulsie to bring him some coffee and wash his feet. Usually when he had been away, he had something for me on his return, acid drops or a handful of raisins or nuts, but this time he did not bring anything, as if he had forgotten about me. We continued to live together like that, Father and Mother and I, and he never spoke about that long absence or mentioned it at all. What I do know about it, rather than suspect, infer or guess — what I do know, whether true or untrue, reliable or not, I overheard incidentally much later, when old Dulsie was shouting abuse at the family of a herdsman who had briefly been in our service earlier, before being dismissed by Father. “Basterfontein’s band of drunk Basters who lied to the master and made him ride all the way to the Boland in search of Pieter!” That is all.
So we continued to live like that, Father, Mother and I, together around the table for breakfast and supper, together around the table for family prayers before going to bed at night. Father was forced again to take on much of the farm work that he had left to Jakob and Pieter before, and from time to time, with Gert’s help, he mounted his horse painfully and rode out to inspect the sheep. I never heard him complain, however; and after his long absence he seemed quieter and even more withdrawn. Did nobody speak any more, was the silence that descended on our home absolute? Anyhow, that is how I remember it now.
Only two events from the time after Pieter and Sofie’s disappearance and Father’s return from his journey stand out in my memory. One of them — when was it, when could it have been? Jacomyn went out with the child as she did every day, and when she had left the house, Mother went to the bedroom, the front room where Jakob and Sofie had slept, and suddenly I heard something crack and splinter, shattering in pieces as it broke. Frightened by the noise where I was standing in the kitchen, I did not immediately understand what was happening, and then I realised that Mother had smashed Sofie’s framed looking-glass against the wall. It must have been very soon after Sofie’s disappearance, when the grudge and bitterness over her flight was still intense — could it even have been on the day of Father’s return, while he was asleep after the long journey? Every trace of Sofie had to be obliterated: Dulsie came and swept up the shards, quickly and submissively, asking no questions, as experience had taught her, and in the oven outside Mother wordlessly burnt the rest of Sofie’s belongings. What they were, I do not know, for I did not dare try and find out, even from a distance; neither do I know what Sofie had taken with her or how much it had been possible for her to take along. Her books must have been left behind, and those Mother would have torn apart with great satisfaction before stuffing them into the back of the oven. And her black satin dress, her wedding gown, did she leave it behind, and did Mother with brute force tear the heavy, gleaming fabric along the seams to burn it, looking on as it smouldered slowly? I do not know, only that nothing remained, that Mother stayed outside at the oven until everything had been destroyed, reduced to ashes in the cold oven, powdery ashes that were blown across the yard. Only the child remained to remind us of Sofie’s short stay, and Jacomyn who looked after him; but the child, after all, belonged to Jakob, the heir.
And after this, one afternoon very soon afterwards it seems to me now, Mother told me to fetch the writing materials. Father was away once again, though I no longer remember where he was, and Jacomyn had gone out with the child, while Dulsie was collecting harpuisbos twigs for the fire; that I remember very well, that the two of us were in the house alone that afternoon. I fetched the ink-well and the pen and brought them to the big table in the voorhuis, and Mother placed the family Bible in front of me. “Write,” she ordered, and I saw that she had turned to the page where the dates of our births and deaths were recorded and she was pointing at the last inscription, that of Jakob’s death in Father’s scarcely legible hand, with above it the birthdate of his child, and above that his wedding date, his and Sofie’s. “Write there,” she ordered, and prompted, “Died …” It was Sofie’s name she was pointing at and, bewildered, I turned and looked up into her face, for no one had told me that Sofie was dead, but it was clear that she would not stand for any questions or objections, and so I bent over the book and wrote what she told me to, while she stood beside me grimly. Did she leave us to die then, I wondered, or did she die suddenly during that mysterious journey, and why were we not informed when Father returned, why did I have to write it into the Bible while Mother and I were in the house alone, and why did he not do it himself as he usually did? But it was untrue and the date was false, it was the date of Sofie’s disappearance or perhaps that of Father’s return after his long search, that Mother made me write into the Bible on her own authority, as if the mere inscription would instantly render it true; and I had to do it because she herself did not know how to write and probably could not even read well enough to make out where Sofie’s name was written.