An Instant in the Wind Page 9

  Lying on the bed in the wagon she heard them coming back, but felt too sick to get up, a nausea which caused the wagon to revolve round her. The yellow lantern ducked and swerved. It had overcome her several times during the previous week: she’d ascribed it to something she’d eaten, or to bad water. But that night, in the midst of all the excitement, the terror, the din of the raid, the shots and galloping hooves, she realized in stunned silence: it was a child she had inside her; that was why.

  And now they’ve burnt or buried it; or covered it with stones, like him. Two sons she buried. That was what broke her. But I didn’t break. Try me, test me. I shall not yield. I refuse to give this barren land my body. I’ll cherish my fertility, it's mine. Let the earth keep its barrenness to itself.

  He sits watching her. She's busy with those damned journals again. She must be doing it deliberately to affirm her superiority. What would happen if he were to get up here and pluck them from her hands and destroy them? How often has he felt the urge to do just that. Swallowing, just as often, his rage in dull resentment. Why? Poor creature: don’t you think I can see how lost you are, hiding so desperately behind your heavy books? She is inside the shelter, while he is keeping an eye, on the oxen as they graze. He has brought them up from the river a little while ago; soon he will tie them up inside the narrow kraal. He doesn’t feel at all easy about the lions. The bastards have been trailing them all day long and found no game to distract them. It was quite early in the morning when he noticed them for the first time as they were crossing a hill; in the afternoon he could hear their low, patient growls in the distance from time to time. He hasn’t said anything to her. She's still weak. And who knows, there may be game down at the river tonight. The lions are bound to go there first. In that case there won’t be any danger.

  She goes on writing. But from time to time she looks in his direction. Is she writing about me? he wonders resentfully. The Baas used to have books like those: punishment books; wages books; wine books. That was the first she asked for when, still unsteady on her feet, she left the sick-hut in her long blue dress and came to him, escorted by the women: “Where are my things? Where are the books?” He showed her. He’d distributed the brandy and tobacco among the people, and one of the guns and some ammunition; also a few of her dresses. The map, of course, had been used to make fire. But the books were intact, no one had shown the slightest interest in them.

  During the long days of her convalescence she paged through them interminably, reading, or simply leafing aimlessly. He was watching her then as he does now. Was she looking for something? What was there in the books to disappoint her, or shock her, or surprise or anger or excite her as they so obviously did? What dark secret did they enclose? The everlasting damnation of the words of God?

  “My husband wrote down everything,” she explained when finally he dared to ask. “About our journey.”

  “Everything?”

  To his surprise, she blushed, then said, slightly flustered: “Well,

  everything that seemed important to him.”

  “ Why do you keep them? They’re heavy.”

  “You won’t understand.”

  After a few days she started writing in them too. He was still watching her. She always appeared self conscious about it, glancing up at him every now and then. Or staring in front of her, thinking.

  She remained dreadfully pale, her skin an almost translucent white. After washing her hair several times, she’d taken to plaiting it to keep it tidy, causing her to look several years younger, a mere girl. It troubled him; it made him aggressive. He didn’t want to be saddled with her like that. What would he do if something happened to her? But, which was worse: what would he do if nothing happened? If she simply stayed with him like that, vulnerably young, girlish and dependent, attainable, yet at the same time so independent and aloof, protected by her Capeness and her books?

  Then why didn’t he simply leave her? Why waste those precious days waiting for her to regain some strength? He could have reached the sea by now. All these years his coming and going depended on no one but himself: that was how he’d come to define his freedom. Yet he’d approached her wagon of his own free will when he’d seen her stranded in the wilderness. How could he have known what would come of it? On the other hand, how could he remain bound to what he’d done so impulsively, that first day? (First day? And impulsively? For how long had it been shaping inside him? For how long had he hesitated, following the wagon, weighing his liberty against his loneliness?)

  The moon waned, then waxed again—the Heitsi-Eibib of his mother's talks dying and reviving—and although she grew stronger, she remained pale, detached and listless, as if being alive didn’t matter so much after all. Only on rare occasions did he notice a feverish glow on her cheeks again, usually when she was working on the journals; and once when twins were born in the village and the men took the girl—the other baby was a boy—wrapped in skins, to expose her on the veld. Elisabeth didn’t immediately grasp what was happening, obviously regarding it as some sort of baptismal ceremony. Only the next day did she question him about it, and then she wanted to go and look for it and bring it back by all means. He had to forcibly restrain her. She wouldn’t have found the baby, anyway. Moreover, the people might have reacted violently if she interfered with their affairs.

  The strange thing was that from that day she seemed to recover faster. Although she remained pale, she made deliberate efforts to move about and restore her energy. She’d had enough of the village. Now she wanted to get away.

  In the end it was the Hottentots who left first. One morning, as they got up, there was an abnormal commotion in the village. All the huts were stripped and broken down, the skins and reed mats rolled and tied in bundles, the poles and beams of the frameworks and of the palisade were heaped up and set alight; also the huts of the unclean women were burnt unceremoniously. Only Elisabeth's hut was left intact. The villagers came round to greet her, with much waving of hands and dancing and gusts of laughter, and then they were gone, men and women and children all, young and old, with cavorting dogs and lowing cattle and bleating goats and sheep. After the dust had settled in the distance there was nothing left of the village, apart from the smoldering heaps and the bare ground, and, of course, Elisabeth's hut.

  She found it inexplicable. He merely shrugged. “Why should they stay here? They always trek like this, from season to season.”

  “But how could you have been so sure, then, that you’d find them here?”

  “I know them.”

  “And where are they going now?”

  “Depends on the rain, and how soon it gets cold. Up to the Snow Mountains, I suppose. They may even cross the Great Fish River.”

  “But what about all the old people they have with them? How can they go so far?”

  “Those who get too old or weak to keep up are stuffed into porcupine holes.”

  “But they can’t do that!”

  In no mood for an argument he left her and walked off on his own; when he came back, he saw her writing in her books. All right, he thought, write it all down. Write about the baby exposed on the veld and the old folk on the road. If that’ll make you feel any better. Get it out of your blood: let me be.

  It was strange, that night, to be alone again. During the day the bare patch where the village had been was still alive with memories, but at the onset of the evening there were no fires as before, no noise of homing cattle, children screaming, the shrill voices of women, the darker merriment of the men gathered round the gli-root calabashes. They were alone again, just the two of them. But because they’d grown accustomed to the presence of people, this solitude was much more unsettling than before. Khanoes rose in the sky, followed by the other stars. There were jackals crying in the distance.

  They sat on opposite sides of their fire, without speaking. But he was watching her. The lovely smoothness of her throat, where the collarbones joined below the little hollow; the frailness of her white hands, h
er eyes burning dark blue, much larger than before in her pale narrow face.

  “The old woman who nursed me,” she said suddenly, staring at him through the flames, “she was very old, wasn’t she?”

  “What about it?”

  “She’ll never survive such a long trek. Will they bundle her into a hole too?”

  “I suppose so, if she gets too weak.”

  “But how can they?”

  “It’ll be better for her than to go on walking.”

  After a long time, when the fire had burnt down into smoky coals, she asked: “What did they do with my child?”

  “It wasn’t a child yet.”

  “What did they do with it? Did they bury it?”

  “I don’t know. It was the women who nursed you.”

  “Or did they expose it on the veld like the twin girl?”

  “I tell you I don’t know!”

  “Why didn’t they give me the girl if they wanted to get rid of her? I could have taken her back to the Cape.”

  “What for? Like they did with my mother? To be your slave?”

  She stared at him with her large eyes, and said nothing. Only, finally, “I’m going to sleep now.”

  She got up and walked off to the hut. But she stopped at the entrance, gazing into the night, her head turned sideways as if listening intently. What was she trying to hear: a baby crying? Or was she simply waiting for him to do something?

  The lion utters another deep moan, not far away now. The shadows are very long and black. It's time to take the oxen into the flimsy enclosure of branches. Jerking their heads and sniffing, they trample the ground uneasily. She is still holding the book on her lap, but she isn’t writing any more. Perhaps she has also heard the lion.

  The next day they loaded the ox and set out from the forsaken village.

  “Are you sure you’re really going to the sea?”

  “I told you I’d take you there.”

  “How far is it?”

  “A long way. But we’re getting nearer.”

  She was still unsteady on her feet. The only reason she insisted on starting again probably was that she felt too exposed in the village after the Hottentots had left. Their presence had been a form of protection. In this new silence there was too much time for brooding; they were too conscious of each other. So it was better to move on, even if the laps, were shorter than before and their progress slower. He supplied food—roots, fruit, berries, eggs, meat—and once again he had to provide enough water for her copious daily ablutions. She seemed to have an obsession about water, about washing herself and her clothes, as if the dust covering her was poisonous. Once, when she sent him off just after he’d spent half the afternoon collecting firewood, he lost his temper and flung his bundle down.

  “Go and find your own bloody water!” he shouted.

  “Do as you’re told,” she ordered furiously.

  He kicked a piece of wood out of his way. “In the Cape I would have had to obey you. Here it's up to me to decide.”

  “In the Cape I would have forced you to obey me.”

  “Oh no. The Cape would have forced me, not you. Otherwise you would have been able to do it here, too. Who are you anyway? What are you?” It was like that early day when he’d lost control about the map. “Just a fucking woman with tattered clothes. That's all!”

  She stared at him in silence, then turned back to where they’d offloaded. For a while he stood watching her, his arms folded on his chest: how she sat down on her bundle, very still, her face turned away in profile, looking into the distance. It was that which moved him in the end, in spite of himself: her pride; and the pathos of her dignity.

  He returned with the bucket of water to find her occupied with thread and needle, sewing up a dress. She looked up as he put down the bucket. He didn’t look at her. Neither did she thank him. But while he was fastening the oxen for the night he noticed that she, back from her bath behind the trees, was making the fire and boiling water and, for the first time on their journey, preparing supper.

  He prods the obstinate oxen through the opening of the small enclosure and ties them to a tree with doubled thongs. Then he blocks the opening with branches. Why the hell didn’t those lions find themselves a prey at the river?

  The book still lies open on her lap.

  “Why did you take so much time with the oxen?” she asks as he kneels to make the fire.

  “Just because.” He looks at her anxious face. “Don’t worry.”

  “I know there's something wrong. Why won’t you tell me?”

  “There's nothing.”

  He can see the tension in the corners of her mouth; the stubborn chin, the strong line of her jaw. The face she offers him is proud and defiant. But in spite of himself he feels something like sympathy for her: how can he be sure it's pride? What does it demand of her to go on like this and never to show any fear or wavering? It would be easy to put out a hand and touch her shoulder, reassuring her. Don’t worry, it's all right; nothing will happen. It's not disdain which keeps me from telling you the truth, only concern that it may upset you too much, and unnecessarily. You may sleep in peace tonight, I’ll keep watch. Tomorrow we’ll be on our way again to the sea. There you can rest.

  But he dare not touch her. And when, finally, he decides to speak to her his voice sounds neutral, even accusing.

  “What have you been writing?”

  “Nothing in particular.” She is quite withdrawn now.

  Her resistance prompts him to open attack. “There are lions near by. And you just go on writing.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” she asks, very pale.

  “Would you have written about them too?”

  She makes a move to close the book, defensive now; but with an impulsive angry gesture he grabs the leather binding. “What is it you wrote in here? I want to know.” Before his eyes incomprehensible phalanxes of letter-ants march, motionless, across the page.

  For a few moments they persist in a tug-of-war before he lets go, ashamed. She slams the book shut and keeps it pressed down on her knees, covered with her arms, like a baby she tries to protect.

  “I’ve got to write down what happens. To take it back to the Cape with me.”

  “Why? Will you forget if you don’t write it down?” He wants to force more from her than mere answers, to open something of herself the way the book was open, but she remains tense and stern, unyielding.

  “It's easy to forget.”

  “What you forget isn’t worth holding on to anyway.”

  “You’d really like to know what I’m writing, wouldn’t you?” she suddenly taunts him. “You must find it terrible not to understand a thing of what I’m doing.” Now it's she who is attacking, no longer he. “I can sit here and write anything I want to. And you won’t understand a word of it.”

  “What do you understand?” he asks blindly. “You only trekked along with your husband. In search of what? You certainly didn’t find anything.”

  “What did you find, wandering through the land all these years?” she asks quickly.

  “That's my own business.”

  “Why did you leave the Cape?”

  “You always ask the same questions.”

  “Because I want to know.”

  “If I were to tell you the truth…”

  “Why don’t you trust me?” she asks desperately.

  “Trust you?” he sneers. “It sounds as if you’re trying to convert me. Next thing you’ll start praying for me.”

  “I’m long past praying.” She looks in his eyes, with open defiance.

  “I couldn’t stand my master,” he says briefly, challenging her. “That's why I left.”

  “Why couldn’t you stand him?”

  “Because he was my master.” In spite of his resentment—perhaps because the descending dusk is urging confidence? or because of the nearness of the lions and the oxen straining at their thongs?—he abandons his defiance for a moment. “One day,” he says, f
acing her squarely, “the day he appointed me over his household and made me mantoor, he said: “You’ve been bred for this land. Malgas for strength; Javanese for intelligence; Hottentot for endurance. You see? You belong here.”

  “What's wrong with that?” she asks. “Haven’t I been bred in the same way? Hollander, and Huguenot, and three generations at the Cape… ?”

  “It's not the land we’ve been bred for at all!” he answers angrily. “You’ve been bred to be one of the masters, and I to be a slave. That's all.”

  “Is that why you ran away?”

  Ignoring her, he adds more wood to the fire, trying to make out where the lions are lurking.

  “And are you happy now?” she demands. “Now that you’re free?”

  He utters a short laugh, so harsh that the oxen raise their heads in snorts of fright. “Do you really think this is what I wanted? Roaming through the wilds?”

  “In fifty years all this land will be civilized,” she says.

  “Civilized? What has that got to do with it?”

  “I don’t understand you,” she says, confused.

  Suddenly: her breasts—that first night in the wagon. He has to struggle against the memory and the violence of the passion it stirs in him.

  “How can you understand?” he answers. “You’re white. I’m only a slave, aren’t I? I’m two hands and two legs, I’m like an ox or a mule. You’re the head, you’re the one who is allowed to think. I’m just a body. I’d better stick to my place. It's presumptuous for me to think. For twenty-five years I accepted it. But then it was enough, I couldn’t take any more. And now I’ve had five years doing nothing but think, in this godforsaken wilderness. It's not written down in books, it's all here, inside me. But what can I do with it?”