Thus we got our own congregation: there was a great deal of conflict and disagreement, but the congregation was founded and the cornerstone of the church was laid and the land for a church village was surveyed at De List. Henceforth we gathered for Nagmaal in the new village and there was no further need to travel down the mountain to Worcester. Initially people stayed in their outspanned wagons on the square behind the church, or they pitched tents, but Father bought three plots and began to build a town house immediately. But no, I must get the story right, for it was not like that: I remember Father in our tent in his old armchair that had been brought from the farm on the wagon, and the people coming to greet him and consult with him, while Mother saw to the layout and building of the new house; Mother in her black dress pacing out the exterior walls of the building, deciding on the size of the large rooms, watching the bricks being hauled and the mortar mixed. Mother, shielding her eyes against the sun, shouting to spur on the workers. When the people came to town for Nagmaal services they always came to view the foundations of that big house, and later they came to watch the walls going up.
Mother hurried the builders and the carpenters and the thatchers along and sent Coenraad to Worcester with the wagon to fetch doorframes and window-panes, and our house was one of the first in town to be completed, with a voorkamer large enough for all the visitors who came to consult with Father, large enough for consistorial meetings to be held there for the time being, and for all the guests Mother wished to entertain. She ordered coffee cups and saucers from Cape Town, four dozen, and the old bowls were used on the farm and later not even there any more. For a long time after the founding of the congregation and the completion of the church we remained without a minister, and for a long time it was Father, as the most senior elder, who stood in for the minister when decisions had to be made or advice given. When no minister arrived to conduct the service, he was often called upon to read a sermon, for though he read slowly and painstakingly, the people wished him to do it and he did not like to refuse, and I can still see him reading from the book on a stand in front of him, his head slightly tilted and the finger of his stiff hand following the letters.
The shuffling and coughing of the people, the smell of the fresh thatch and the moist earthen floor, and Mother seated in the front row among the elders’ wives, Mother’s straight back, stiff neck and angular shoulders. Mother’s eyes never wandered in church as she sat rigidly in the place of honour that was her due, while Father faltered and stumbled over the words, and after the service she moved among the churchgoers like a shadow, erect and unyielding in her black dress with the new gold chain around her neck, and she paused to greet people without ever really joining in their conversations, lingered to ask and answer questions without revealing anything or making any concessions. Yes, it was during this time that Father gave her the gold chain as a gift, or perhaps she ordered it from Cape Town herself, Mother who never wore any jewellery except her wedding ring: a long chain of narrow gold links reaching to her waist, as was the fashion at the time.
What did people think of her when they spoke to her outside the church or when they called on her in the new house to satisfy their curiosity? I do not believe she had any true lady friends, not to mention confidantes, and neither did anyone who knew her love or respect her, and she knew this without actually caring in the least, for she desired neither affection nor respect. What did they say among each other as they watched her walk away, followed by Maans and me? She did not care about that either. Father’s status in the congregation and his increasing wealth were important to her, the front seat in church, the new house, the coffee cups, the visiting ministers who stayed the night and the unspoken envy and spite of the other women — I had probably always realised this as I lived beside her, but only now can I find the words to express it, an old woman alone in the dark with no one to listen.
It was during this time that Maans was sent away to school, and I believe that this was Mother’s wish as well, for the desire for every child to be educated was as much a part of the plan she followed blindly yet relentlessly as the new house or the coffee cups. Most young people in our parts were taught at home by school-masters hired by their parents, like my brothers with Meester, or they somehow picked up just enough reading and writing to be confirmed, but in those days no one had a private governess like Miss Le Roux, neither was anyone sent away to school in the Boland, and Maans was the first. Where did Mother get this idea and why was it so important to her? Was it that her instinctive wisdom and insight told her that money and education granted power and commanded respect? Moreover, Maans was her favourite, just as his father once had been, and with an indulgence never evident before, she even showed him some affection at times. Thus Maans was sent to school in Worcester with a small roll of gold coins wrapped in paper, and he was instructed to have a suit made there and to have himself photographed in town and send us the portrait, which Mother kept in her Bible. Maans strongly resembled his father, a big, dark, slow boy, but without his father’s fierce temper, a good, willing child who never gave any trouble or caused any problems: he was excited about leaving home, but at school he did not fare very well. I had to read his infrequent notes with their mistakes and ink blots to Father and Mother, and then Mother took them from me and put them away in her bedroom. Thus the three of us were alone, Father and Mother and I, with old Dulsie in the kitchen, but by this time she had become so old and confused that she could hardly be reckoned any more. Father walked with great difficulty, and the responsibility of the farm fell mostly to Coenraad.
When Maans left it made no real difference to me, for I had lost him when he began to grow up, and I had learned long ago that nothing endured and no belonging could be considered permanent. All my worldly possessions I had obtained through Father and Mother’s mercy and I used them without ever regarding them as my own: clothes to wear, a brush and comb, a sewing kit, a Bible and a hymn book. The only possessions that were truly mine remained a secret that no one else knew of: the little cross Meester had left me and the ring to remind me of Sofie, wrapped in a remnant of cloth and a piece of sheepskin, secreted among the stones of the wall. I never went there to look at them — why would I, for what would I do with them? — yet I was always aware that they were there, an undisclosed and undisclosable secret while Mother and I were curing meat in the kitchen or paring quinces for bottling, while I sat beside Father’s chair with the pillowcase I had to hem, while I served coffee to the visitors, absent-mindedly enduring their questions and their curiosity.
The tiny parcel among the stones in the wall of which no one knew, the memories that I shared with no one, the brightness of the water at Bastersfontein and the thatch and the beams collapsed over the ruins, Sofie in her glistening black frock among the dancers, Pieter with his pale body on the haystack, laughing in the sunshine, the moonlight across the floor and the mist rolling along the kloof, and the stone dislodged by my foot, rolling away, reverberating from one rocky ledge to the next and from one cliff to the next, lost in the vast, invisible depths of the abyss before me. Sometimes I woke at night gripped by an unexpected fear, and in the dark of the sleeping house I lay awake as I do now, surprised by that fear which I could neither explain nor understand. In this bed, in this room I lay in the same darkness, thirty, forty years ago and more; but now there is nothing left to fear, all that remains for me is to remember, and slowly begin to understand.