In all the years Bastersfontein had been no more than a name to me, an isolated place where Jan Baster and his people once lived and, in later years, our herdsmen and their families, and I had never been there myself; yet it was on our land, at the farthest limit of our farm, and there was no reason why I should not go there if I wished. I would have to wait, however, until spring when we returned from the Karoo: wait, I told myself while I helped Mother pack the crates and tie up the bundles for the trek downward; wait, I said as our trek began the descent down Vloksberg across the rocky ridges, and I looked back at the faded grey winter landscape of the plateau we were leaving behind, looked back at the clouds covering the distant horizon where I knew Bastersfontein lay; wait, I repeated during the months of our stay in the Karoo, and I yearned for the Roggeveld more strongly than ever.
Why was it so important for me to go to Bastersfontein, and what did I expect to find there? I did not know that myself, and today I still do not know, only that the names that had emerged so suddenly from old Dulsie’s incoherent mutterings in that time of silence and loss were to me the first firm evidence I could cling to, and the only promise that I might somehow discover what had happened to Pieter and Sofie. Wait, I said, and I did not mind waiting, for to be patient was another thing I had already begun to learn.
When spring arrived, we loaded the wagon once more and followed the sheep up the slopes where the flowers were appearing in the crevices, and once again we took possession of the empty house waiting for us just as we had left it behind months before, the doors closed but not locked. The cots and beds were reassembled, the feather mattresses spread out and the beds made; the fire was rekindled in the kitchen hearth; our lives continued. I had not forgotten my resolve, but I could not simply disappear without explanation for an entire day, and so I had to endure patiently, waiting for the rare occasion when Father and Mother would be away all day. At last, that same spring or early summer, it happened — it must have been a funeral, for that was the only reason why Father still left home in those years, and Mother had begun to accompany him so that he would not have to travel on his own; I do not remember anything else, for it was unimportant to me. I only recall the fact of my sudden freedom, and how I hurried to finish my chores, and then I tied a handful of dried pears in a handkerchief and told Maans to come, for today we were going for a long walk. To the end of the world? he asked, for Coenraad had once taken him on his horse to the edge of the plateau where he could look down on the Karoo. Yes, yes, I answered impatiently without listening, and took his hand and set off.
It was far that we had to walk, but not so far that we could not be back before Father and Mother returned, as long as we walked briskly and did not dawdle, and for most of the way Maans ran ahead of me, turning around, laughing, to ask if this was far enough, if we were almost there. Spring or early summer, radiant in the glow of the silvery sunshine, the wind blowing at us from the rim of the mountains, and in the shelter of the rocky ridges, in the hollows and on the sunbaked slopes we came upon fields of flowers illuminating the silver-grey veld with their brightness, spekbos, gousblom and botterblom like in earlier springs, but I took no notice and hurried Maans along when he wanted to linger to pick flowers. The farther we walked, the more anxious and impatient I became, as if it had become imperative that we reach our destination: perhaps, if we could only move fast enough, I argued irrationally as I stumbled over the uneven ground, if we could only get there in time, it might still be possible to find something, though I still did not know what I was looking for. The remains of a fire, perhaps, with the ashes still warm, bedding that had retained the impression of a body or bodies, the fresh tracks of horses? No, not really, I had never deceived myself so completely, but at last there was something within my reach, something tangible after all the secrecy and evasion, the rumours and suspicions on which I had survived for so long, perhaps incomprehensible in itself, but nonetheless comforting as a symbol of the things I could not understand, like the ring on my pillow in the early morning, or the cross between the stones in the wall. Eagerly and hopefully I pressed on, and time and again I over-took the child running ahead of me, and I communicated my excitement and anticipation to him, so that he insisted on knowing how far we still had to go and if we were there yet.
Blindly and instinctively I headed in the direction I knew Bastersfontein had to lie, never doubting that I would be able to find and recognise it. Maans had stopped again to rest, for he was beginning to tire from the long walk, and I reached the crest of a low ridge and saw a hollow ahead of me with reeds and water, a moist, fertile spot in the pale-bright spring landscape, and I knew it was Bastersfontein. I began to run, with Maans behind me, crowing with delight, not understanding what was happening at all; my hair had come undone as we were walking and I had not bothered to tie it up again, and it blew across my face so that I could not see where I was going, and I stumbled and fell to my knees, tears pouring down my cheeks, while Maans danced around me, laughing with joy at our unusual game, excited to find out what would happen next.
But that was all; that was Bastersfontein, we had arrived there. A moist, fertile place nestled in the shelter of a low ridge, a few dilapidated hartbeeshuisies, the collapsed remains of a few old shelters or kraals of stacked branches, the fluttering of white butterflies and the small, shiny leaves of the harpuisbos reflecting the light — what more had I expected? I remained on my knees, and later Maans became bored and ran off while I knelt there still, tears pouring down my cheeks, crying for the first time in years with no one to see my tears, no one to know. Does Maans still know, does he remember?
After a while I wiped my face with my hands and tied up my hair, and I got up. So this was the place where Pieter and Sofie — but no, not even that: this was the place that a confused old woman, muttering in front of the fire in the late evening, had identified in passing as the place where Jakob and Sofie, or perhaps Pieter and Sofie, had hidden, or perhaps not. How could I tell how much of her tale was truth and how much imagination? Perhaps I had misunderstood completely, perhaps I had not even heard her correctly, yet it was all I could cling to. Here Pieter and Sofie had hidden for an indefinite period while people had been searching for them, here Gert had ridden over at night to bring them food stolen from the house, and from here they had finally continued on their journey, destined for somewhere I could not follow. I had to believe that, it must have been like that, for it was the closest I could ever get to them again. Gert and Jacomyn had known, even Dulsie had known, though she had not been let into the secret; our herdsmen and their families must have known of the white people living at Bastersfontein, but nobody had said anything, nobody had given them away, silently united in the plot in which the fugitives were protected from the masters and were helped to escape. Father rode to the Boland in search of them without anyone enlightening him, and I struggled desperately to create from a few incidental words a story in which I myself could believe.