by Andre Brink
It's like the storm the night after Larsson had disappeared, she thinks. No, it's infinitely worse. That night she slept right through, overwhelmed by the futile waiting and the day's long fear: that storm protected her and kept the animals at bay. And then, of course, she was sleeping in the wagon, the canvas firmly tied down. Tonight there is nothing between them and the storm. Except for the trees, the forest.
But soon it is the trees that become their greatest peril. They discover it, both at the same time, when they hear the first shuddering thud in the forest, and the sound of trunks and branches torn and dragged along.
“It's a tree, uprooted.”
And then another; more following, everywhere in the dark, the deep roots torn from their tenacious grip on the earth. Still the wind is on the increase. Now the lightning flickers ferociously, without end, and the thunder booms like falling mountains.
Deep in the timeless night one of the giant yellow-wood trees on the fringe of their shelter is struck by lightning. They hear the blow reverberating through the din, and looking up in terror, see the sky aflame above them. The next moment the enormous trunk comes crashing down right across their shelter, tearing down everything in its way, bursting into flames over its whole length. The wind grabs burning branches, hurling them into the surrounding wood. At the very first sound Elisabeth has jumped up, clinging to him with fear.
“We must get out of here,” he says urgently, shaking her to bring her to her senses. “Help me.”
“What must I do? Where can we go?”
“Out of the forest,” he says. “Come on, hold on, hold the ox while I load it.”
“He’ll trample me down!”
“Don’t let him see you’re scared. Speak to him. We haven’t got any time to lose.”
Trembling, she tries to control the animal, stroking its nose while Adam loads their things on its broad back.
“Come on.”
He takes the lead. She follows, stumbling, away from the burning tree, out into the open where the wind hits them like a river in flood.
“Over there,” he shouts. Forcing their way through smaller shrubs and bushes where there is less danger of falling branches, he leads her into a tangle of wild olives and euphorbias. They are not even aware of the thorns and twigs lacerating their skins.
And then the rain begins. It is as if the wind, reaching its climax, is simply washed away by a torrent of water streaming down from the black and flashing skies. After all these days of impossible heat the cold is suddenly unbearable, wrapping them in what feels like liquid sheets of ice. Crouching under the tanglewood they hide, pressed against the ox. Adam has removed one of the loading hides to cover their heads, sheltering their possessions with their bodies. And she clings to him, pressed tightly against him in panic, sharing the meager warmth of her body with his, trembling.
From time to time the wind breaks loose again, and in the distance trees tumble and split open. Brief fires flare up, the lightning performs its St Vitus dance in the clouds; and the rain comes down once more, beating them to the ground.
“Is it never going to stop?” Her teeth are chattering uncontrollably.
So wild is the violence of the storm that she isn’t even frightened any more: bruised, thoughtless, beaten, dull, she numbly huddles against him. He has his arm round her, using the other to hold on to the miserable protection of the hide.
“It’ll pass,” he says. “We can only get wet, that's all.”
And at daybreak, with the cold grey light filtering through the black rain, the violence subsides. The rain continues for some time before it, too, diminishes. She remains cuddled up against him, shocked and still. And as the storm abates, exhaustion takes over, flooding her in a great drowsiness. She falls asleep.
The cold forces her to wake up again, soon, for a moment confused about where she is and what has happened; then she discovers him against her, sleeping, his head on her shoulder.
Uncomprehending, she looks at his sleeping face, feeling the shudders moving through his body. Have they been like this all night, so close together, their limbs entangled? Now in his sleep his face is disarmed. No arrogance or threat is left, only exhaustion, silence, distance.
Half numbed with cold, her legs sleeping, she carefully tries to change position. Immediately he opens his eyes, looks up at her.
“Sleep on,” she says, her voice strange to herself. “You’re very tired.”
“It's too cold. We must move about.”
Painfully, they crawl from the bushes, now conscious of every thorn and vicious branch. She looks at the fresh red scratches covering his brown body, as if she's looking at someone she has never seen before.
Everywhere bushes have been blown down and trees uprooted, leaving huge bleeding holes in the red sodden earth. He looks around, his back to her.
Ever since that night when I dared to slake the aching thirst in me I’ve been no more than a body in your eyes. Our bodies are in our way. But how else can we recognize each other? We are ashamed of our bodies, but they are not ashamed of us. In the storm they comforted one another with the naturalness of logs drifting together in a flood.
Look at me. You needn’t say anything. Just look at me, acknowledge me, do not deny what has happened. Give me confidence, give me faith. Can’t you see I’m in need of it? If you deny this, then our night was no more than the huddling of animals in a storm, you and I and the ox alike. And I know it was more than that; it was more: it has soaked into us like rain. Admit it. That's all I ask of you. If you deny me that, you are denying me.
“Keep an eye on the ox,” says Adam. “I’m going to try and get a fire going.”
“Where will you find dry wood in this weather?”
“There may be thickets in the forest where the rain didn’t reach. If I can find some sneezewood, it’ll burn all right.”
He jogs off without looking at her. Elisabeth stays behind. From the bundle she takes fresh clothes—that, too, is damp in patches, but not soaked as the dress she is wearing. The journals, rolled in skins, are, thank God, dry.
An hour later she sees a thin line of smoke rising tentatively from the forest; soon afterwards he reappears to fetch her. They urge the ox to a trot, working up some warmth in their frozen bodies. The small fire makes her shudder with pleasure. Her hands spread open, she stands waiting while he boils some water and roasts a few sodden slivers of biltong.
“We’d better stay somewhere here until the weather's all over,” he says after a while.
And huddle together in the night, pretending, when daylight returns, that it hasn’t happened? For how long can one live a lie? A body contains its own truth and will not be denied.
“No, I want to go on,” she says urgently.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he answers curtly. “We’re staying right here.”
“I tell you…”
“Who are you to tell me anything?” he asks irritably. “I know the world round here.”
“Please,” she says, miserable. “I can’t stay here. Why can’t we just try?”
“What's pressing you?”
You.
“We must get to the sea.”
“There won’t be anything left of the raft.”
No, there's nothing left. When they reach the river, it has risen so high that the lower bushes are submerged. The raft has disappeared, disappeared altogether.
“We’ll have to build another,” he says.
“Is it really necessary?” she asks stubbornly. “Surely the ox is strong enough to swim through with the load. If we take out the stuff that can be damaged by water.”
“Like your books, I suppose?”
“Yes.” She looks in his face. “I’ll carry them myself. You can take the ammunition. And perhaps some of the foodstuff. The rest will be all right.”
“You don’t know this river.”
“The ox is strong.”
“And what about us?”
“We can swim.”
He laughs briefly. “Straight down to the sea?”
“We’re wasting time,” she says impatiently. “Bring on the ox.”
“You’re asking for trouble.”
“Do you want me to take over?”
He looks at her, smoldering, then turns away and walks up the slippery bank to where they’ve left the ox. Grimly he opens their bundle on the ground. She comes to kneel beside him to help him sort their possessions. The journals, the ammunition, the gun and the pistol; as much of the flour and sugar as they can manage, all rolled in a couple of hides. The rest he loads on the ox.
The animal refuses to budge when they try to prod it down the bank. But the slope is slippery and it is impossible to turn back. With its front hooves in the brown water it makes a final futile effort to swing round, then the mud slips out from under it and with a terrified bellowing snort it plunges headlong into the current.
Elisabeth glances swiftly at Adam, sees the narrow, angry line of his mouth, and turns her head away again.
Bearing up under the weight of its load the ox swims away from the bank, carried a little way downstream by the flood; but with its nose and horns above the water it manages to maintain a steady pace against the current until it is only a few yards from the opposite bank. There, so suddenly that at first she cannot believe it, it rears up, bellowing wildly, swings round in the invisible grip of a whirlpool, and disappears. They start running down the bank to see if it will reappear. Only once, a few hundred yards down, they briefly glimpse a dark, bulky thing which may or may not be the ox. Then nothing more.
She has begun to cry, soundlessly, her eyes wide open, her nails cutting into her palms.
“I warned you,” says Adam with almost exultant fury.
It breaks something loose inside her. “It's you forced me to do it!” she sobs, “It's you!”
She swings away from him and begins to run on, farther along the bank, downstream, stumbling through the tall wet grass with her long dress. Angrily she picks up the hem to run faster. A few times she slips, or treads in the holes of mice or snakes, and falls down, ploughing through the wet mud. But every time she gets up again, crying hopelessly, running on and on until her chest is burning so much that she is forced to stop. Nowhere in the dirty water is there any trace of the ox, not even when she comes round a wide bend from where she has an uninterrupted view over nearly a mile of the river. Straight down to the sea. And all their things; all hers. The pots and pans and cutlery, the remaining food, the blankets, all her clothes.
She stands staring at the water, caught in its evil spell. To jump into those murky eddies and disappear; never to have to struggle any more against everything that's become unbearable, not to have to safeguard herself against him any more, not to try anything or wish for anything or believe in anything any more; just one jump to end it all, to be washed away into the wide sea.
But she can’t. I’m too cowardly, I’m too tired. I don’t want anything any longer. She doesn’t even look up when she hears him approach. All she can do is stare at the flood.
“Don’t,” he says, taking her arm.
“How do you know I…”
“We’ll get through.”
Through her tears she grimaces up at him. “How can you still talk about getting through?” She tries to wrench her arm from his hold. “Let me go!”
“First stop crying.”
Suddenly she can no longer bear it. She presses herself against him, sobbing, oblivious, clinging to him, while he steadies her with his arms and tries to calm her down, clenching his teeth.
After a long time she recovers, remains standing with her head against him for another moment; then turns away, ashamed, trying to wipe her face.
“Come on,” he says. “Before it starts raining again.”
For two more days they hide in the bush, in a shelter of branches to ward off the worst rain. The wind has died down, there is no longer any danger of falling trees. And finally the rain also subsides and the sun comes out again.
He brings her leaves of the chewing-stuff shrub, watching with satisfaction how the sweetish, acrid juice soothes her strained nerves in a gentle euphoria. Once he brings back a hare—caught in a snare, or drowned, or frozen?—and roasts it on the sneezewood fire which he has kept going all the time. After the weather has cleared, they divide their few remaining possessions in two bundles and set out upstream to the ford he remembers from previous treks. There they construct a small raft with a platform for herself and their stuff, and, wading cautiously through the still turbulent stream, he pushes it across.
She insists on looking for the ox first, and for two whole days they pick their way downstream through the debris of the subsided flood, discovering innumerable carcasses of drowned animals—buck and hares, a couple of baboons, even a leopard—but no sign whatsoever of the ox or its load. And in the end she has to accept the inevitable and allow him to turn away from the river again, striking overland in the direction of his distant secret sea.
When you clung to me, crying: was it me you needed, or merely something to hold on to, a body, a prop? When you slept in my arms— do you know for how long I lay awake looking at you, not daring to wake you?—was it only from exhaustion and fear, or because you knew I was holding you? What do you really know about me? What do I know about myself? And if I am so unsure, what else can I do but trek on meekly alongside of you, on to my sea, and then farther, back to your people, to fulfill the terms of our agreement?
“Did you have a wife in the Cape?” she asks once, à propos of nothing at all.
“Slaves don’t usually get married.”
“I mean… someone—a woman—someone you…”
“I fucked from time to time,” he says cruelly, looking directly at her.
Her cheeks are burning. “That's not what I asked,” she says. “That's not what I meant.”
“What else?”
She stays silent for some time before, her eyes cast down, she dares to ask. “Wasn’t there anyone you loved?”
“No.” But after walking on for a long way, he says: “Only once. For a short time. A girl from Java. Then she was sold.”
“Sold?”
“It's known to happen.”
“Perhaps you were lucky,” she says reflectively, stunning him.
“Why do you torment me?” he asks vehemently.
“I’m serious.” She is quite subdued. “It remained intact for you, the way it was in the beginning. You didn’t have to stand by and watch it change and get distorted.”
“What do you know about it?”
She isn’t listening to him. “Some people only love one another,” she says quietly, “so that they can always have someone at hand to torture.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“It ought to be. But is it really? I’ve often thought, traveling on that wagon: love is the beginning of violence and betrayal. Something in oneself or in the other is killed or betrayed.” And then, even more quietly, but with great intensity: “Didn’t I destroy as much in Larsson as he did in me? Poor Erik Alexis!”
“Perhaps you never loved him.”
“Perhaps. But how can one ever know for sure? How can you know in advance? Does one ever know oneself so thoroughly that one can dare to expose oneself?” She shuts her eyes briefly, in horror. “That is the most terrible thing of all: to give yourself into another's hands, to give him absolute power over yourself, to withhold nothing at all.”
“But if you don’t do it…”
“Then I suppose, you’re safe. But then you’ve forfeited your chance.”
He stares ahead of him, over the shrubby veld stretching out before them, barely billowing, broken by small dense clusters of trees. Yes. Somewhere, somehow, it should be possible to touch someone and never to let go again. To hold someone, not for a moment but forever, in a world where everything is fleeting and painful and treacherous. And for the sake of that small possibility you must be willing to risk everything,
to break through, to walk into the night naked. One can stay out if one chooses, one can remain safe. But if it means enough to you… He looks at her.
Yes, she would like to say. Yes. Allow me to say yes. But something inside me still clings to that ultimate safety, something inside me is still wounded, I’m still scared. How can I give myself up if I don’t know to what or whom?
I desire you. I have to fight against my passion. I want you with me, inside me. But how dare I say yes? The yes I have within me forces me to say no. I do not want to still the arid hunger of my body. I want you. And yet I’m not ready for you.
“I had a very good friend at the Cape,” she says as they walk into one of the thickets. “She was terribly attractive, and very popular. They were rich people, her father was a merchant. Then, quite suddenly, two years ago, she had a baby. At first she wouldn’t tell her parents anything about it, but they forced her to. Then she told them the father was one of their neighbor's slaves.” She doesn’t look at him. “They forced her to marry her father's bookkeeper. And the slave was sent to Robben Island for life.”
“Why do you tell me this?”
“I don’t know. I just remembered it.”
They emerge from the bush. Among the last trees she stops with a sudden intake of breath, grasping his arm.
“Look!”
He has already seen it.
On the opposite slope there stands a long, low, clumsy mud cottage with a brown thatched roof and a squat chimney leaning against the back wall. A small stone kraal. Signs of fields. Signs of people.
Yet no people are to be found. I can’t understand it. Adam thinks there may have been a Caffre raid in the vicinity, it seems they sometimes come all the way from the Fish River. In that case, the people probably fled. Or else they’ve trekked in search of better grazing. They may yet return. There's nothing wrong with the house: the few windows are bare cavities and there are holes in the dung floor, but it will be very easy to make it habitable again. It's rather squalid, and small, only the two rooms. They must be impoverished farmers. Or perhaps this is all they need.
