An Instant in the Wind Read online

  For a long time he remains standing in the opening of the rough shelter of branches surrounding the wagon, holding the dead hare by its hindlegs; from the nostrils tiny drops of blood stain the trodden grass. She doesn’t look up.

  He can still turn back. She won’t even know that he has been there; the last dogs have disappeared long ago, with the Hottentots. What is it that drives one from one's familiar wilderness to the ultimate outspan of a trek like this? What is it that compels one to follow a wagon for weeks on end, tracking it like a dog or a beast of prey? What is it one cannot annihilate in oneself, which forces one to circle a camping site restlessly, endlessly, drawing ever closer?

  He can still go away. But he stands looking at her, like many times in the past weeks, only so much closer now, and openly. Her long dark hair is loose over her shoulders, which are narrow and hunched, as if she has grown younger and much more weary overnight, no longer a woman but barely a girl. The blue dress with white embroidery and without any trace of the padding and stiffening and hoops of the Cape, now crumpled and dirty. Last night she slept in it and today, for the first time on the journey, she hasn’t changed or washed herself or even combed her hair.

  Here I am. Five years has been enough; too much.

  Something finally makes her look up: not sound, but silence. The wind which has blown steadily through the days, raging past the camp last night, tearing branches from the hedge, tugging the wagon sail from the plaited reeds of the bodywork and shredding it to bits, has suddenly died down.

  “Who are you?” That is the first thing she says as she notices him and draws back on her seat, after the initial shock about his clothes.

  “My name is Adam Mantoor.” He doesn’t move, except to readjust his grip on the hare's legs.

  “Who are you?”

  There is something almost comic about the situation. He comes a few steps nearer to reassure her, but misinterpreting his move she grabs one of the blunderbusses and jumps up.

  “Don’t move!”

  He hesitates, and gives another step.

  She pulls the trigger, but nothing happens. Dropping the gun, she looks round in bewilderment, then picks up one of the long pistols and hurls it at him. He has to duck, or else she would have hit him. Now he knows for sure. Calmly he comes to the wagon and puts down the hare. She begins to retreat under the canvas roof, her hair clinging to her cheeks. He grabs the gun. After the briefest of struggles she lets go, too scared even to try and hide.

  From one of the open bags Adam takes a handful of powder, weighs it in his palm and, under her wide-eyed stare, pours it down the barrel, gently secures a plug, then rams down a measure of lead. Cocking the gun so that the flint stands up like a snake ready to attack, he offers her the rifle, the ornate butt turned towards her.

  Without removing her eyes from him she takes the gun.

  “What do you want?”

  He shrugs. The jacket is too large for him.

  “Wait,” she says suddenly, withdrawing into the tent and returning after a few seconds with a copper mug in her hand. “Brandy.” She motions to her mouth. “Drink.” Repeating, with more emphasis, as he fails to react, “Drink.”

  Adam shakes his head and puts the mug on the front seat beside the dead hare.

  “You must go away now,” she orders, reassured by the loaded gun in her hands. “My husband will be back at any moment.”

  “No. He got lost.”

  “He’ll shoot you dead if he finds you here.”

  “With his gun full of water?”

  “How do you know…?” she asks, taken aback. Then, with renewed resentment, “You watched him! For how long have you been spying on us?”

  He makes a vague gesture which draws her attention back to the broad cuff of his brocaded sleeve.

  “Those are his clothes. You killed him and stole all his things!”

  “I’ve had these clothes for a long time.”

  No, Erik Alexis was not wearing this outfit when he left yesterday morning, following the scarlet bird. But ten days ago, a fortnight perhaps, it's noted in the Journal: they thought the Hottentots had stolen it.

  “So it was you.”

  Another shrug.

  “They belong to my husband.”

  “What about it?”

  “Who do you think you are speaking to?”

  Yes, he's thinner than Erik Alexis. Same height, more or less, but much thinner. Actually he looks ridiculous wearing that expensive blue jacket and the floral waistcoat and those breeches, with neither hat nor stockings to go with them, and those rough buckskin shoes. A clown in the wilderness. I don’t know what you’ve come for. I don’t want you here, I’m scared of you. But I need someone to help me. He stayed away all day yesterday. It wasn’t the first time he has wandered off like this in pursuit of some exotic bird or beast but he's never stayed away a night before. And such a night.

  And yet she did sleep. Probably through pure fatigue and fear, hardly conscious of the storm that raged. The dogs disappearing one by one: two in a fight with the lion, another dragged off by a hyena, others shot by the Bushmen they tried to pursue, the rest treacherously running off with the Hottentots. Van Zyl becoming more and more unmanageable, stealing brandy and picking quarrels, hiding behind shrubs to catch glimpses of her changing or bathing; then running off into the bush; the pistol shot. “The Hottentots can help me bury him. You stay away, it's not a pretty sight.” So considerate. But what of the nights or early mornings? The sight of the back of your head in the yellow lantern light, writing your Journals, drawing your map. You’re as bad as old Mr. Roloff. If maps could cook you might have married one. You wouldn’t miss the rest. It's I who have to slake my thirst, and burn. Is this what I left everything for, traveling into the wilderness with you, one flesh? One map, one journal— flesh is much too uncertain and unpredictable for your scientific precision; too indecent and too terrible. The only thing you trust is the length of your barometer, the mercury rising or falling the breadth of a hair. How you punished that Hottentot who broke the spare bottle. You had him stretched out between the wagon wheels, and stood watching as they flogged the life out of him, your pale Swedish hands trembling. And that very night they all deserted us. Are you surprised I slept so well last night? My fear was also relief, release. In the heart of the storm I was safe and protected, much more than ever in your company: in all that violence nothing could touch me. But now another day has passed and tonight I won’t be able to sleep at all. You must be somewhere. But why didn’t you return in answer to my gunshots, until I’d fired off the last one and this savage had to come and load it? I hope you found your beautifully plumed bird after all.

  “Where do you come from?” she asks.

  He turns back with a vague, sweeping gesture including most of the dusky world behind him: tall, gentle slopes bending over into sudden deep ravines overgrown with tangled brushwood: trees she doesn’t know, shrubs she doesn’t know, named by Erik Alexis Larsson, Latin names, meaningless to her ears.

  How apt that you should merely motion, saying nothing: for this land has not yet been given a name, certainly not a Latin one; it does not yet exist. And it's yours, all right, you may have it. But what am I doing here? I must have come in search of something, beyond the Cape and its farthest known mountains, but not this: more mountains, more plains, more valleys and rivers; wind and rain, drought, silence. Not this, it means nothing to me.

  Adam moves; she tenses. But he only picks up the hare, this time by the ears, and goes to the grey and black ashes of the fireplace washed out by rain. She watches him intently. He squats down, his back turned to her—I could shoot him now, with the gun he's loaded himself—takes out a knife and begins to skin the hare. Rapid, neat flicks of the blade which fascinate her, from the white paws down to the armpits, and across the breastbone towards the stomach. The same color flesh. She sits down on the wagon seat again, keeping the gun across her knees; but he doesn’t look up once. From the barrel beside the wago
n he takes a kettle of water to the fire, as if he has been familiar with the place for a long time. Under the belly of the wagon he finds dry wood. With his back to her he kindles a fire. How? Gusts of whirling smoke, an acrid smell of herbs which suddenly makes her feel nauseous. The smell of the land. He scorches the grill and arranges the hare meat on it.

  The sun is down, the sky still glowing. It is impossibly quiet. Behind the nearer hills are farther mountains, different from the porcelain blue ridge of Hottentot's Holland, larger, bulkier, like vast animals asleep.

  While the meat is roasting and the kettle boiling on the fire, he brings in the two remaining oxen and begins to tidy up and strengthen the windblown kraal. He is aware of her watching him. He need only look up to see her. But what would there be to say if he did? I know you? I don’t know you? Who are you? What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. We don’t want to know about the Cape here.

  It's not true. For five years I’ve been talking to myself in the wilderness; for five years I’ve never been able to banish the memory of that Mountain and the bay. The best view by far is the one from Robben Island. They bury you in the sand up to your neck and urinate in your mouth. Through their widespread legs you can see the Mountain. Mother is singing in the vineyard: Rock of ages, cleft for me… And Grandmother, huddled in her crocheted blanket, mumbles about Padang and about the red and green of hibiscus and shivering touch-me-not leaves.

  She has her food on the wagon; he stays beside the fire.

  After the meal she puts down her plate and looks up.

  “Bring me some water for washing,” she orders. Behind her, under the canvas roof of the wagon, a lantern is burning, suspended from a short chain.

  He doesn’t move.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Fetch your own water.”

  Even in the light of the fire he can see how pale she has become.

  “I won’t let a slave speak to me like that!” she says angrily.

  “I’m not a slave.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought you needed help.”

  “Don’t cheek me.”

  “Why not?” He gets up quietly.

  “I don’t want you here,” she flares up, a touch of hysteria in her voice. “I can manage perfectly on my own.”

  He stands watching her while, pale and with teeth clenched, she climbs off the wagon and comes to fetch the kettle of boiling water from the fire next to him. As she returns to the wagon, she looks back and says viciously: “You don’t seem to know your place.”

  He makes no response.

  “As soon as my husband comes back…”

  He turns back leisurely and begins to feed the fire with logs for the night. Moving away from the smoke, later, he can see her shadow against the canvas of the wagon tent. She must be close to the lantern, for the shadow is grotesquely large, yet he cannot look away. He's never been so close before. She is undressing. Bent over a tub, she begins to wash herself, her arms and body freed from the ample dress. In profile he can see the movement of her breasts, no longer a mere bulge covered by lace and frills, but round and defined.

  White, with your black shadow. For five years I’ve been reduced to talking to myself, or to small bands of wandering Hottentots, men-of men, in the freedom of the wilderness I freely chose. That night when I returned from the island, stumbling out on the sand, half drowned, naked under the sliver of moon, the wind clammy against my shivering body: that night I chose, and knew: this was the way to freedom. Somewhere there it lay in wait for me, ever receding. Beyond what mountain does it begin, across what river? Where does the South stop tugging at one like a tide, back this way, back to people, back to one's childhood? And there you’re standing with your shadow against the canvas. You’re not even aware of it, unless you despise me so much that you don’t care?—brushing your hair, moving your shoulders and arms. If you turn I can see the points of your taut nipples. You: the ultimate thou-shalt-not, the most untouchable of all, you: white, woman.

  Around them lies the thin circle of the kraal and the wild fig-trees. Surrounded by the infinite and determined by it, reduced by it.

  In the dark, soon after the light on the wagon has gone out and the warm smell of the wick has vanished, the animals start up. Outside the fire has died down to a glow. Last night, in the storm and the howling wind there was no sound of animals. But tonight they’re back, distant at first, but approaching until they are quite near.

  Jackals laughing. Wild dogs barking. And the sound she fears most, the eeriest of all: the cry of hyenas, starting low down and rising to a pitch, like exclamation marks in the dark. The moon is not out yet. Erik Alexis Larsson would have known when the moon was due to wax again, and wane, and disappear. Erik Alexis Larsson would have known everything.

  Are they feeding on him tonight? Or are they on their way here, through the futile little fence, past the fire—perhaps even lured by the fire? Hippos will leave the water to come to a light in the dark. Beside a river you named on your map, we were sitting at our small table playing chess that night, the lantern between us, when suddenly the huge thing appeared. You grabbed the lantern and began to run in wide circles, followed by the hippo, until the Hottentots shouted at you to drop the light. You hurled it away from you fleeing in the opposite direction, and the animal stormed the lantern and crushed it into the earth and went away. All you noted in your Journal afterwards was: “Discovered that some animals, e.g. the hippopotamus, are hired by light instead of being scared.”

  Pushing herself up from her bed she crawls to the front of the fastened tent and opens a corner of one flap. The night feels cool on her face; it's stuffy inside. After a while she recognizes his dark shape beside the fire. She feels an urge to call him, but what is there to say or ask? Her voice is unmanageable in her throat. There he is, but it's so dark she cannot even make out whether he is looking this way or not. Is he going to keep watch like this all night? Why should he? She doesn’t want him here. He is a threat to her independence, her silence; a threat to her. Yet if he hadn’t been there, like this, tonight, she would surely have died of fear. Should she offer him a gun? Or is it sufficient for him to simply sit out there, dressed in her husband's Cape clothes which hang so loosely on his tall, thin body? That dark man in the dark.

  Elisabeth secures the corner of the flap again. Her hands are trembling, the palms are moist. He's there, outside. She pulls the embroidered sheet up to her chin. Her eyes pressed shut, she remembers the mulberry tree, the fruit bursting with redness and ripeness. Tonight, oh God, these hyenas will never stop calling. It's not a pretty sight, he said. And her face is burning like that day in the tree.

  He is the first to return to the camp among the wild fig-trees, emerging from the narrow overgrown kloof which runs through the greenish brown hills. It is still hot, even more so in the clothes he hasn’t grown used to, and he has been walking since early morning. In a folded buckskin over his shoulder he carries a small hoard of lightly speckled eggs, carefully removing them at the fireplace where he arranges them in a hollow.

  Looking up, he sees her approaching through the trees on the opposite side, tall, with her long dress flapping loosely round her long legs, and strands of dark hair clinging moistly to her forehead and cheeks. As she comes nearer, he notices that she is disturbingly pale, with a bluish hue around her mouth and specks of perspiration on her upper lip. She is not conscious of him at all. Walking right past him she goes to the wagon where she stops, panting lightly, pressing her hands against the splashboard and resting her head on the inside of her elbows. Her sleeves are rolled and he can see the delicate lines of light on the tiny hairs of her forearms.

  It is only when he finally gets up that she becomes aware of him, jerking up her head in fear; then, recognizing him, she relaxes, her head dropping as before.

  “Would you…” she begins, but stops again, breathing with some difficulty and clenching her teeth. Without completing the question she g
oes to the back of the wagon and scoops up some water in a jug, pours it into a cup and comes back. This time she sits down on the grass, leaning against the front wheel. And all the time he stands watching her detachedly, perhaps with a touch of malice.

  “The sun too bad for you?” he asks after a while.

  “No,” she says stubbornly. “It's nothing. It's only…” Then her body seems to contract. She gets up hurriedly and runs round the wagon where he can hear her vomiting. It startles him, makes him feel guilty. To occupy himself, he starts breaking wood for the evening fire, but abandons it after a while. At last she returns.

  “You ill?” he asks.

  “No.” She sits down, leaning against the wheel as before. She has untied her hair; it is long and soft and dark round her shoulders.

  “There must be something wrong,” he insists.

  “I’m expecting a child.” In sudden anger she sits upright. “He has no right to leave me at a time like this. He's never cared for anyone but himself.” But she is too weary to remain angry. After a while she says, “You didn’t find anything, did you?”

  “Not a trace. I’ve been up all the fingers of the kloof. The storm washed away everything.”

  It is still early, but he decides to make the fire after all and boil a kettle.

  With a tone of complaint in her voice, a tone she loathes, she says, “At any other time I wouldn’t have minded the sun at all. It's just because I…”

  He stays silent.