Why do I remember that evening of Maans’s coming of age in so much detail, young Jasper Esterhuysen and old Tant Mietjie and the darkness of Pieter’s room, Dulsie by the fire in the kitchen and the outspanned carts in the yard? Everyone is long dead, the evening forgotten, but I still remember it all while I can no longer say how Maans and Stienie’s wedding was celebrated, and all the New Year’s dances and birthdays and weddings of later years have been wiped out of my memory. That New Year’s Eve after Jakob brought Sofie to us as his bride, and the evening of Maans’s coming of age, with Helena Breedt ducking her head as she entered the house while I watched through the fine haze of candlelight and dust as she smilingly smoothed her hair, made me realise anew that I would never belong with these people or have any part in their lives.
The boisterous young men made Maans drink too much that evening so that, being unaccustomed to liquor, he was very sick and in the end had to be carried to the shed and laid down on Coenraad’s bed, for the house was filled with people. Where Coenraad was I do not know, for I did not see him that night. I stayed with Maans in case he should need anything, and I must have fallen asleep in the chair beside his bed, because I recall being awakened at daybreak by the sounds of vehicles being inspanned and the last guests departing; for a moment I was bewildered, and when I looked through the window I half-expected to see Gert and Jacomyn dancing together in the early dawn to the rhythm of the violin, but there was no one. I went out into the bright morning, and I saw the carts departing, and I knew I was safe again, safe at last.
That winter, just before people started leaving for their winter quarters, Jasper Esterhuysen rode over one more time with something old Tant Mietjie had sent Mother, and he stayed for lunch and lingered for a while. I did not say much to him but when he left, he took my hand in his own small, slack hand and said he hoped to see me in the Karoo that winter. No, I replied, we were not going to the Karoo this year because of Father’s ill health, Maans would be going alone with the sheep; and I gave it no further thought.
That year we got our own minister at last, and in the spring he was ordained. We went to town for the occasion, Father too, though he had to lie across the back seat of the cart, supported by pillows; perhaps he felt he could not be absent now, after we had been waiting for so many years, or perhaps it was only because the visiting clergy would be staying with us in town and he wanted to be there himself to welcome them. I still remember the consuming zeal with which Mother prepared for the reception of these important guests, and how the servants suffered, the sudden outbursts in the kitchen and the screaming and slamming of doors, the hurling of utensils, like in the years of my youth, long ago. When the guests began to arrive, none of this was evident, however, and long afterwards people still spoke of the way they had been entertained by us. I only remember those sudden outbursts in the kitchen, and Father being too ill to attend the services: the people had to come to him, and there was an endless stream of visitors to our home.
When it was all over and the excitement had abated, it became clear even to Mother that the end was near and that Father would not be able to return to the farm; but he went anyway. Maans was sent to the farm to fetch the wagon, and we loaded him on his mattress, and so he was carefully and painfully brought home, for he said he wanted to die in his own house on the farm, not in the strange new house in town, and this time Mother bowed her will to his in an unusual and uncharacteristic way. Thus he died in his own bed in his own room, in the bed where he was born, in the house built by his father, and Mother and I took turns to keep watch at his bedside. I cannot say I grieved for him, for his death was a release from the pain he had endured so patiently and for so long; but as I sat beside his bed one night, alone in the sleeping house with the tallow candle burning low in the candlestick, I suddenly realised he was the only person who had ever showed me any love or affection, except for Pieter long ago when I was young, and Sofie, and all that belonged to the past now. In the distance I heard an eagle owl hooting, and I experienced the same feeling as on that cold silvery morning when I stepped out of the outside room and saw the guests departing and leaving us behind, the feeling that something had ended for good.
We buried Father in the graveyard beyond the ridge, and Maans inherited the farm. It was during this time that diamonds were discovered in the interior, and shortly after the funeral Coenraad left for the diggings: I still recall that he left on foot the way he had come, with all his possessions in a grain-bag over his shoulder. There was great excitement about the diamonds, and after the funeral it was the main topic of conversation; Attie Keuler left for the diggings overnight with a few young men from the Fraserburg district, and Maans also spoke of going, but Mother made no reply when he mentioned the possibility one evening at supper, and in the end he stayed and continued on the farm. It was also during this time that old Oom Wessel, his other grandfather, died, and he inherited from him as well, money, as was said in later years, and farms in the Bokkeveld and the Ceres-Karoo, so that more responsibilities fell to him, and he had to go to Worcester several times to consult with the attorneys.
After a year or two Coenraad came back without any visible evidence of being either richer or poorer, but he did not return to us. Oom Thys Breedt had died a short while before, and he married Helena and went to farm on Fisantkraal where he prospered, for he worked hard, and their children are well-respected people today, but people say Helena was never very happy. Jasper Esterhuysen married Danie du Plessis’s widow and they lived with old Tant Mietjie on the farm. She had always been known as a miserly old woman, and they themselves lived frugally and carefully, so that people often made fun of them. They had no children, however, and when they died, everything they had accumulated so painstakingly was sold.
What Father’s death meant to Mother, I do not know, for even during those last years of her life no familiarity ever developed between us. Perhaps she mourned the death of the man with whom she had shared fifty years of her life in her own way, without realising it herself, so unfamiliar the emotion must have been to her. However, after his death she gradually laid down her responsibilities on the farm, and though she still kept an eye on things, made decisions and gave orders, she left most of the work to me.
She began to grow old, one might say, and if I hesitate to speak that word, it is because of the weakness and degeneration it suggests. With the years a certain mellowness and tolerance set in that had never been in evidence before; she shrunk a little as well and became a little smaller and quieter, and perhaps it was also during this time that she noticed the first signs of her disease, without giving in to it or mentioning a word about it. There was no weakening or flagging, however, no sign of grey in her dark hair, and her back remained as stiff as ever. If I think about it now, I realise with amazement that she must have been close to seventy, but the fire, the passion, the relentlessness and the sudden fury, those were unabated. Nevertheless, after Father’s death she seemed to withdraw from us, losing interest in the house and the farm; on the other hand the new town house was claiming more of her attention, so that she stayed there more often, sometimes even for a few weeks at a time. There was a minister now, she said, and she could attend church every Sunday; but were the church services really so important to her? It was the battle about her seat which claimed most of her time and attention during those first months after Father’s death and which called for her presence in town, for she insisted on keeping her place in the front row among the wives of the officiating and resting elders: it upset quite a few people in the congregation, especially the wives, and there were people in the district who never set foot in our house again as a result of those events, but finally the minister and the church council gave in, and Mother retained her seat.