It was during this time, while she was busy with the new house, that Stienie decided Pieter should marry, for it was just then that Andreas Stofberg died. Andreas had always struggled on his farm and the drought had given him a hard knock, so that after his death the farm had to be sold to pay his debts. People expected Stienie to take care of his widow and young daughter, for she was their closest relative, and Maans seemed inclined to help, for he was fond of the little girl, but Stienie showed no particular inclination to take the woman in, not to mention her child. It was too much of an upheaval with the building, she declared, and in the end they went to live in an outside room of the town house, and Maans probably supported them, though Annie earned a little money with her sewing. After a while, before the new house had even been completed, Stienie remarked in passing one day that she wondered if it might not be a good thing for Oom Pieter to get married, and before I could recover from my astonishment, she went on to list all the advantages; she mentioned that he and Annie could live in the old homestead when we moved to the new house. She spoke rapidly without looking at me, but despite her concern about Oom Pieter, I knew that very little of what she was saying was the truth, for she just wanted to acquit herself of her obligation to Annie and get rid of Pieter before the house was completed, so that there would be no danger that they would spoil that new elegance with their presence, or that she might have to take in Annie and her child. Even so, even so, I thought, and did not know whether to laugh or cry; and at last I made no reply to her suggestion, for what would the point have been of voicing reservations? In the circumstances it was probably the best solution for everyone, even if it were conceived mainly to benefit Stienie. Annie was a decent young woman, quiet, neat and diligent, and she would look after him; and Pieter loved children and would accept her little girl in his life: the two of them would never have a true marriage, but he would be cared for, taste some security and warmth and, who knows, perhaps even something like love and happiness here at the end of his life. Thus they were married hastily before the magistrate in town one morning, almost as if it were something to be kept from people, with only Maans and Stienie and me as witnesses; Annie’s mourning period had only just passed and she was still wearing her black mourning dress. Pieter was almost sixty by then but during the few years they lived together, I deemed them to be happy, as far as I understood anything about happiness.
I did not know whether to laugh or cry, I have said, and I still do not know today. Actually, as I have said before, I never thought of the silent, good-natured, smiling old man in the outside room on the farm as my brother and, sitting together on the bench at the kitchen door of the town house that morning, I had made a final attempt to reach him and had been forced to turn away in the face of his implacable silence. There was no road leading back to the past, I realised, before me a wall of stones blocked my entry, and behind it in the distance lay the world of my youth, bathed in sunshine, untouchable but at the same time unreachable, with no connection between this smiling, patient old man in his shabby suit of clothes and the laughing youth with the pale naked shoulders on the sheaves, the youth hoisting himself soundlessly over the window-sill in the blinding moonlight. Why should I blame Stienie for pushing him out, as if I had not done it too, as if I had not been just as ready as she to forget about the poor and slightly neglected old man in the outside room?
At the time that Pieter was married, while the new house was nearing completion, Maans became Member of Parliament. Despite being quiet and modest, he had gone ahead in our community, and when they wanted to establish a branch of the Broederbond in our district, they encouraged him to serve on the committee. He baulked then and declared that he was not a man for politics but later, when parliamentary elections were due, they approached him again and he agreed. Why? As he himself had said, he was not interested in politics and he was not an ambitious or assertive man; but no one from our parts had ever been elected to Parliament before, and it was the best Stienie could still strive for, to be a Member of Parliament’s wife who goes to Cape Town every year and socialises with all the important people. Thus Maans travelled in the district to talk to the people and solicit votes, and the building was temporarily halted while Stienie accompanied him. “That was the year when Stienie stood for Parliament,” Floris van Wyk with his sharp tongue remarked one evening at a New Year’s party when he did not know I could overhear, and everyone around him laughed as if they appreciated the joke; nevertheless, Maans was elected, even though Stienie might have done the persuading.
When the building was resumed, Stienie’s plans had become more grandiose, and when they returned from their first stay in Cape Town she introduced even more changes, though the house was nearing completion by that time: the wall between the voorhuis and the dining-room had to be knocked down because she wanted to install folding doors, and she had bought a number of things in Cape Town that had been sent along. For a few years it continued like that, and after every trip things had to be fetched at Matjiesfontein, so that our own wagon could not always manage and Maans had to hire the transporters in town with their donkey carts to help. There were chandeliers and floral wallpaper for the living-rooms and coloured tiles for the built-in fireplaces, tasselled curtains with linings and occasional tables and ornaments, a piano for the voorhuis, though Stienie could not play, wardrobes with mirrored doors and brass bedsteads with coir mattresses, a new dinner service, a tea service, brightly-coloured carpets, and who knows what else: every year after their return from Cape Town the men rode over to discuss politics with Maans and their wives came along to inspect the new things Stienie had acquired. Later they laughed behind her back at her pretentiousness and scoffed at her elegance, but all too often it was only because they were envious. “Well, Maans, it cannot be denied, you have built yourself the grandest house in the entire district,” Dawid Loubser remarked while they were getting into their cart after their first visit, but Lina and Gertruida pretended not to hear, and to my knowledge no woman in the district ever went as far as good old Dawid in his honest admiration. After a few years Stienie seemed to lose interest, however, or perhaps there was simply nothing more she could still need or want. She stopped buying things for the house, but continued to return from Cape Town with hat-boxes and suitcases full of new clothes.
Yes, no doubt the new house was elegant, at least for our parts, a large stone building overshadowing the old homestead with its thatched roof on the ridge behind it, its tin roof visible from a distance across the veld, gleaming in the light. The old house had been a shelter where we retreated to cook, eat and sleep, a place where children were born and, if you were lucky, where you eventually died in your bed; but the new one, what purpose did it serve, with more and bigger rooms than we could use, more light pouring through its large windows than anyone could need, and all those fireplaces and lamps and brass beds? I wandered about in that big, bright space, jumping at the noise of my soles on the wooden floor and the rumbling of the rain on the tin roof, and sometimes when I ran into Maans in the passage unexpectedly, he, too, seemed strange and ill at ease; but at least Stienie was happy after her own fashion, for the time being, anyhow, or as happy as it was possible for her to be. And, strangely enough, in time I found, after a visit to Annie who now lived in the old homestead with Pieter and the little one, that the old house where I had been born and where I had grown up appeared cold and dark, as if I were getting used to Stienie’s new house.