An Instant in the Wind Read online

  Finding that silence threatened, she still refuses to yield.

  “It's a waste of time to argue with you,” she says haughtily. “You’re an idiot.”

  “All right!” he flares up again. “So your map brought you here. Well, let it get you out of here too!”

  Just because you can read a bloody map! Does that make me a slave? I don’t carry a bit of paper around with me. My land I’ve seen with my eyes and heard with my ears and grasped with my hands. I eat it and drink it. I know it isn’t something there—it's here. And what do you know about it?

  “If I’m an idiot, then look after yourself.”

  She bends down and, picking up the map, begins to roll it up carefully.

  “I’ve managed all the way to this place,” she says after a while, her voice strained, “with my husband.”

  “He managed so well that he's now gone and lost himself.”

  “He’ll come back.”

  “It's nearly a week already. For how long do you still plan to sit around here?”

  “How can I leave if he doesn’t come back? For the rest of my life I’ll go on thinking that he may have returned and that I wasn’t there to wait for him.”

  “Is he so helpless without you?”

  “I’m married to him.” He hasn’t been expecting a reply; certainly not this reply, so quiet, with her head held high. He looks away from her. She is breathing deeply. What happened between us, is of no concern. Whether we made a mistake or not, is of no concern. And it's irrelevant, too, whether I love him or despise him. But he is my husband. He is the father of my unborn child.

  “If you think it's been easy for me to wait here all this time…” she says. Her tone has changed, but there is no self-pity in it. “If you think it's been easy to trek through this country…”

  He glances at her, but her eyes force him to turn away again and he goes to the wagon. Perhaps it has started for you too, now. One thinks one can escape this land, but sooner or later it catches up with you.

  She follows him.

  “What are you going to do?” she asks behind him, climbing on the wagon to put the map away. “What do you want us to do?”

  “I’m going on to my sea,” he says. “I’m tired of waiting here. It's time for me to go, and I’m leaving in the morning. You can follow your map if you want to.” He looks up. “Or you can come with me.”

  “And suppose he returns tomorrow? Or next week?”

  “You want to go on with that child inside you, or do you want to stay here waiting for a dead man?”

  “He is not dead!”

  With a shrug he takes a gun from the driver's seat, together with some powder and lead.

  “Where are you going?” she challenges him.

  “Find some meat.”

  “Who gave you the right… ?”

  Although he is conscious of desolate revolt in her as he leaves the shelter of branches, he doesn’t look back. Leaving the cluster of wild figs behind, he goes down the first grassy slope, green after the recent rains, with red trenches gashed into the earth by the torrent. Farther down the bush grows denser. Following a game path among euphorbias and cycads, he wades through the stream at the bottom and tackles the opposite hill, knowing that there are usually game grazing on the ridge above. He feels oppressed. How is he going to get her and her child to his sea? Do you know how far it is to the Tsitsikama? And how are you going to reach the Cape from here? It is impossible for you to stay here, I know. But how will we trek from here? This is not what I was looking for when I came to your wagon. Surely not this. All I wanted was—what? How must I know? I only wanted to hear about the Cape. After all these years in the interior: animals and silences, stones and harsh shrubs, the occasional band of Hottentots. One learns to find one's way, to get along; and yet. Now I cannot leave you here at all. The shock of sadness with which I recognized, in you, the Cape I hate, still numbs me. How can I let it all slip away again?

  Who, he wonders, is in whose hands? Who needs whom?

  Now they must go on. Every time, in going on, there is something of the first venture. Gathering useful bits of wood on the island, in those stolen minutes between the breaking of stones, and gardening, and fishing; until there was enough for a small raft and oars. For months on end. Waiting for the moment—for occasionally there was relief from the chains and the foot-irons. It must have been a holiday, for they were given brandy and there was much reading from Scripture; and with the guard in a drunken stupor, the chains loosened, he managed to get away and hide in the shrubs for the few hours until dark. The sound of the waves, the grating of shingle on the beach; then the rhythmic liquid sigh of oars in the water, moving in the direction of the faint glimmering of light on the coast, the dark mass of the Mountain; the stars in the expanse of sky above. The wind was contrary, the sea abnormally rough. But it was his only chance. Soon the waves grew so unruly that he had to abandon the oars and cling to the raft so as not to be washed away, feeling the boards creak and part and clash together and suddenly break loose. Now he would have to swim, keeping one broken plank wedged under his chest. If only one could see the waves in time. He swallowed water, feeling himself grow heavy like a sodden sail; losing his sense of direction, going under, coughing, gasping. He wouldn’t make it. His arms were numb with cold, his chest was burning. Simply to go on and on, in the watery imminence of death. But suddenly he was belched out on the shore. Perhaps it felt like this to be born. Crawling dumbly out of reach of the tide he lay shivering and twitching on the sand, a dying fish.

  “Remember,” the Baas had said, “you’ve been bred for this land.”

  This you, land? Then hold me tight, I can’t fight any more, the water is trying to steal me back.

  And then, after the single night in the mountains, the stealthy return to the farm beyond; and the flight on horseback. For if daylight trapped him on the Cape Flats it would be the end.

  I lift up mine eyes unto the hills, that's what they’d taught him as a child; for he’d been brought up with religion, oh yes, with Jesus Christ and Heitsi-Eibib and Grandmother Sail's tales of the Prophet all confused.

  Hiding in the dense bush through the endless hours of the day. And then, on the third night, up the steep slopes of the mountains, leaving the exhausted horse behind.

  From up there he could see the whole wide curve of False Bay in the moonlight, terrifyingly beautiful; and Table Mountain in the distance.

  —My mountain, my bay. That's where I was born, that's where my mother lives and my grandmother lies buried. And the father I never knew? On the square in front of the Castle my grandfather was broken on the wheel, his name lives on. Mine, all mine, I can shut my eyes and recall it very clearly. Silver trees, flamingoes and vineyards; the bare plains; the white houses; I can smell the stench of the slave quarters in town, and the sour young wine of the farmyard; I can see the coaches driving past in a cloud of dust and dogs. For all this, said the Baas, I have been bred. Now I must thrust it from me like an old blanket riddled with fleas, redolent with the familiar stench of many years; one even learns to love one's itches. To start again beyond this range, to learn everything anew; this is a stone, this is a tree, there is a buck, there is a poisonous adder. My land, my desolate wilderness: now it's you and me.

  Tomorrow they will set out to hunt me. They’ll saddle their horses and call their dogs and polish their rifles and weigh off lead; and they’ll hunt me like a jackal. For now I’ve become a wild beast, less than a wild beast: a fugitive thing. Cain, at least, my pious mother told me, had a mark on his forehead to protect him. My only marks are on my back, not for protection but for damnation. All right, then, hunt me: try to run me down; see if you can wear me out, see if you can reach me. From now on it's me and you. My Cape, I hate you for what you’ve done to me. I cannot live without you. Now I have to. For now I’m free. And this is what freedom really means: that anyone may kill me.—

  The moment he sees the young buck appearing among the trees ahead
of him he raises the rifle to his shoulder and aims for the neck. In his haste to reach the kicking animal he nearly treads on the beautifully spotted puffadder baking among the warm stones; jumps aside instinctively reaching for a stone, and kills the thing; red blood on the golden skin. Then rolls his dead buck over, cuts open the belly with swift flicks of his knife, tears loose the guts and shakes out the inside blood before he swings the body across his shoulders.

  The sound of the shot shocks through Elisabeth waiting at the wagon. For a moment she feels sick, unable to move. My God, so he's returned, he isn’t dead after all! She hurries to the opening in the kraal and stops there, too dazed to go any farther. Several minutes drag by before she sees Adam appearing far down among the bushes, slightly stooped under the weight of the buck. It's only you, not him at all.

  She sits down. From shock; from relief. She feels ashamed to admit it to herself, but it's true. Unbearable relief that it isn’t Erik Alexis Larsson coming up that slope.

  “And this is Mr. Larsson. My daughter Elisabeth. We’ve heard so much about you, we really couldn’t wait to meet you.”

  A large man with a full, neatly trimmed, reddish-blond beard; middle-aged, his skin surprisingly white—she’d expected him tanned— with almost feminine ruddy cheeks; large white hands with red hairs bristling on the fingers and clear, abstract, mildly surprised blue eyes.

  He bowed briefly; she nodded. No one said anything. Her father kept on talking but they did not really pay attention; then her mother called him away to attend to other guests. There were people staring at them, young girls.

  “Your father insisted on introducing me to you,” he said, uncomfortable. Perhaps he meant it to sound flippant, but it gave a different impression. “I’ve been told you are an accomplished pianist?”

  “All the girls in the Cape are accomplished pianists,” she said. “They also sing. And dance. What else should they do to pass the time?”

  “You make it sound rather awful.”

  “The Cape is a very small place,” she said. “It will soon bore you. But, of course, it needn’t bother you—you can always go away again.”

  “I have no intention of leaving very soon.”

  “The girls will no doubt be pleased. Most strangers just come and go.”

  He did not react. With an intensity she found surprising, and in the accent she could not but find charming, he said: “You must realize the world is getting rather small for explorers like me. After the discovery of Peru there is very little that remains. It's really only Africa.”

  “The Cape isn’t Africa.”

  “But one can start from here.”

  She remained stubborn. “It's not easy to get the Governor's permission for an inland journey.”

  “You almost seem to blame me.”

  “Why should I? I don’t even know you. It's no concern of mine what you intend to do. But it's better to be prepared, isn’t it? One gets entangled in many trifles here in the Cape, and people don’t try to make it easier for you. The Lords Seventeen must give permission for every single thing. And they…” She shook her head angrily. “They’d like to keep us here, confined between the mountains and the sea. I suppose they’re scared of what would happen if we started moving inland. They may lose some of their authority. I can see you don’t believe me, but it's true. And my father is one of their officials.”

  “Why should you worry about the Lords Seventeen? You’re well established here?”

  “Oh, very well indeed!” she said viciously. “It's a disease we’ll all die from one day.”

  “Have you never been away from here?”

  “Yes, I spent a year in Holland, with my mother. We visited all her relations.” She was silent for a moment, then added cryptically, “Holland isn’t a very big place either.”

  “But full of life!” he insisted. “It's a gathering-place for all the world.”

  “Of course I enjoyed it. The concerts, the parties. And Amsterdam is beautiful. But it's—it's all so different. They’re my mother's people, not mine.” Smiling a bit more confidentially: “Do you know what I enjoyed most of the whole journey? It was on our return, in the Bay of Biscay, when there was a terrible storm and everybody thought we were going under. They wouldn’t allow me on deck, but I went and I stayed there, clinging to the railings and getting drenched. It felt like the end of the world, it was wild and beautiful.”

  “You seem to be yearning for an apocalypse.”

  She left him for a moment, returning with a bowl of fruit. “I’m neglecting my duty towards a guest,” she said with formal courtesy. “Try one of the small red figs. They’re delicious. Specially brought from Robben Island. My mother gets her cauliflower from the island, too, you’ll taste it later tonight, no doubt. And, for special occasions, we order our water from there. It's supposed to be the sweetest in the Cape. You see, everything that's good here comes from elsewhere.”

  He scrutinized her for a long time without saying anything, his blue eyes distant.

  “Well?” she challenged him with sudden violence. “Will I merit a paragraph in your diary?”

  “Pardon?” he asked, shaking his head as if he had just awakened.

  “You’ve been staring at me so intently.”

  “Please forgive me,” he said, fumbling. “I’m not really used to conversing with young ladies.”

  “Don’t feel obliged to waste your time in my company.”

  “No, please, that's not what I meant at all,” he objected, with a touch of consternation. “I think I’m boring you. I’m so clumsy. I’m more used to landscapes than to people.”

  It was his silence, she thought, his stern reserve, which had prompted this rebellion in her, to force him to react, to reveal some of his secrets, this man containing a world enclosed in himself which he refused to share with her Cape; explorations and nights, beacons, mountains, high seas, aborigines, animals, exotic landscapes.

  “Don’t you think people are landscapes too to be explored?” she asked defiantly.

  “You make it sound like a challenge,” he replied.

  “On the contrary, Mr. Larsson,” she said coolly. “I’m only a very small bit of land in between the mountains and the sea.”

  Accompanying him, a week later, in a hired coach on the winding road beyond the Mountain to Constantia, the landscape unfolding below them in valleys and marshes, she watched him intently: how his eyes took in every trifle, how a touch of excitement caused his cheeks to burn: exactly like this he must have traveled through other countries, through regions never explored before; and she felt an urge to break open that something in him so that she, too, might see it and experience it and know what it meant to have this fever inside one.

  Round a bend in the road just beyond the town a large pack of baboons scattered before their coach; the dogs accompanying them burst into frenzied barking, giving chase up the slope towards the cliffs.

  “Today they’re scared of us,” she said, amused. “But the last time I came this way there was one old male that broke away from the rest and tried to attack me on my horse. It took some hard galloping to get away from him.” She laughed and pushed back her hair.

  “Do you come here often?”

  “I try to. Although my mother doesn’t approve, of course.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous?”

  “I suppose it is. There are still leopards in the Mountain. And vagrants and runaway criminals hiding in the bushes. But if one really had to consider everything that might happen, you would never leave your house at all. And it's very beautiful round this next bend, you’ll see.”

  Below them, as they came round the Mountain, there were large flocks of flamingoes scattered across all the shallow pools of the marshland; one flock, frightened by the noise of the coach, took to the sky, exposing the brilliant pink of their outstretched wings.

  “You see?” she said, ecstatic. “ To me this is the most beautiful sight of the whole Cape.”

  “Phoenicopterus ruber,
” he remarked pensively. “They belong to the same group as the cranes, the grallae.”

  She turned her head sharply, but he had no more to say. The road sloped down towards a sandy plain.

  “In winter one can’t get through here at all,” she told him. The road is under water then. If you’re still around this coming winter, you must come and see.”

  Gradually the patches of wild flowers on either side expanded, more and more luxuriant, until there seemed to be no end to them; large fields of heather dotted with proteas. Some of them he pointed out to her— ixia and melanthia, monsonia, wachendorfia—names she had never heard before; once he ordered the driver to stop so that he could collect others strange to him. Returning to the coach, he held an enormous bunch of them up to her, with a sudden smile which made him look much younger than usual.

  Thank you,” she said, delighted and surprised, taking the flowers. They’re lovely.”

  But as soon as he resumed his seat beside her, he took back the flowers. She realized that she had misunderstood his gesture, and bit on her lip, embarrassed and annoyed.

  “I’ll press them as soon as we arrive,” he explained. “ To think that not one of them has been named yet.”

  “How do you find names for them all?” she asked, not without a hint of sarcasm.

  “I only name them provisionally,” he said. “Later I dispatch them to Sweden. I have a friend there, Carl, who is working on a system for naming all the plants in the world.”

  “And what happens once you’ve systematized them all?”

  “Wherever I go, I collect plants for him,” he continued, without listening to her. “In the Amazon, in Surinam, in New Zealand, everywhere I’ve been.” For the first time there was undisguised enthusiasm in his voice. “Sometimes one is completely overwhelmed by a new place, you feel quite helpless because there is so much all around you; you would like to take it all with you, you wish it were possible to gather it all up inside you. It's as if your eyes and ears simply cannot cope with it all. But then you set to work, naming things, trying not to look too far ahead but to concentrate on one thing at a time. And suddenly it's all done, and you discover that it no longer overwhelms you. Now you can handle it, it belongs to you. Nothing can take it from you again, even if you are miles and oceans and hemispheres away. Now you possess a small portion of the earth.” He carefully hid his bunch of flowers under his seat. “You see? I’m assembling a portion of Africa too to take away with me one day. Something of this vast continent which will be my own.”