An Instant in the Wind

by Andre Brink

  They watch in silence, teasing the anemones, trying to catch the quicksilvery fishes in their hands. Like many other times. But different. For in the past their visits occurred at low tide and today they are surrounded by the deeper droning of the sea, rising and swelling. Once she jumps up with a cry of fear as a small splash of foam suddenly breaks over her bare back.

  “Got a fright?” he asks, smiling.

  “Yes. The waves are getting so wild.”

  In spite of herself, she looks back towards the land.

  “It's too late now,” he says quietly.

  She nods.

  He gets up and comes close to her. “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “That's good. It makes it easier to feel him.”

  “What?”

  “The sea. What else?”

  They stand close together, looking over the rocks towards the deep sea, the incoming waves, swelling and rearing up as if they mean to break right over the black rock-wall, then thundering past on either side, sending the brilliant white foam flying. Through all the cracks and gullies small waterfalls come rushing down towards them, feeding the rock-pools.

  “Are you sure we won’t be washed away?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But are you sure, Adam?”

  “No, I’m not sure. I’ve never seen it happen, but with the sea one never knows.”

  “But how could you have brought me here if you… ?”

  “I came with you, didn’t I? Whatever happens to you will happen to me too.”

  “Are you mad?” she asks, losing control of yourself. “Do you want us to drown here?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But why did you let me—why did you let us…?”

  “You said you wanted to feel the sea.”

  “But not if it's dangerous.”

  “How can you feel him without danger?”

  “We’ve got to go back!”

  “I told you it's too late.”

  “Will it rise any farther?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “We’ll see. Another hour to go, more or less.”

  “I can’t wait that long. It's unbearable.”

  “You’ll just have to, now that we’re here.”

  “Adam, I’m not going to…” She is too upset to continue.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says calmly.

  Hysteria sweeps over her.

  “How dare you?” she screams, attacking the lean, tough muscles of his chest with her fists.

  He grabs her wrists.

  “Let me go!” she shouts at him.

  “Not until you stop.”

  “Adam, let go!”

  He holds on, swaying this way and that as she tries to wrench free. She can barely restrain herself from spitting in his face with helpless rage.

  They are soaked by another shower of foam. She gasps for breath.

  “Adam, my God… !”

  “I’m here with you,” he says soothingly, as before.

  “I didn’t want to die,” she whispers, sobbing.

  “Who said you were going to?”

  She looks up at him urgently, trying to find hope in his eyes, or merely an explanation, something which will make comprehensible to her what is happening. But he looks back at her, unrelenting.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asks, desperate.

  “Lie down.”

  Once again she tries to resist, but he forces her back until, struggling wildly, she loses her balance. He holds on to her so that she doesn’t fall, and lays her down, pressing her firmly against the sand. Furious, but powerless, she succumbs.

  For a while he sits beside her, looking down at her, still holding her shoulders lightly. Then he says: “Elisabeth.”

  It is so seldom he uses her name that it touches something deep inside her, in the pit of her stomach, deeper down.

  “Adam, what do you want of me?”

  “Listen to the sea,” he says. “That's what we’ve come for.”

  She shuts her eyes, still terrified. Lying here on the sand covering the deeper bed of rock, she seems to be hearing the sea with more than her ears: as if the sound is moving right into her, that dull unending roar, entering every fiber of her, until she can hardly distinguish between herself and the sound. She is so hypnotized by the low thunder of the water that she is hardly aware of him moving beside her, over her; on to her. Instinctively she closes her legs, but he forces her down again, prying her thighs apart with his knee, hurting her. She begins to cry, no longer understanding what is happening. He seems possessed, ramming into her. She goes on struggling as if he were a stranger overpowering her. But in the very act of crying and struggling against him she discovers, shockingly, blindingly, that she is no longer fighting him but actually clinging to him, clutching, grabbing, digging into his body with her fingers. Hearing her own voice like the scream of a sea-bird: “Yes! Yes! Yes! You must! You must!”

  The thunder grows around them. An endless spray comes splashing over the rocks, drenching them. She no longer feels the sudden stinging cold, she is not even frightened any more. She has resigned herself utterly to drowning here. It is the sound of death reverberating through their rocking bodies.

  Only much later, after the wild thrashing of his body against hers has subsided and she feels herself slowly shrinking in from that infinity of sound, back, inwards to this patch of sand among the rocks, protected from the sea, she hears him whisper against her cheek:

  “It's all over now. It's going down.”

  “Adam?”

  He moves his arm and pushes himself up on his elbows, looking down at the small moist strands of hair on her temples. “My name is Aob,” he says. “Adam belongs to other people. Will you remember that? My name is Aob.”

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “My mother.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything. It's just a name. It's mine.”

  She doesn’t move under him. “We didn’t die,” she says at last, almost, it sounds, with regret.

  “No, we’re alive.”

  “Aob.” She says it softly, as if she's testing the taste of the unfamiliar sound. But she has no will to resist: neither the name, nor him, nor the light, nor the ebbing sound of the sea. There are seagulls over them. Let them be. Let everything be as it is. Let nothing ever change or pass. Together, they drift off into sleep, the deepest sleep they’ve ever slept together; and only when the ripples of the low-tide wavelets begin to suck and whisper against the sibilant rock do they wake up, and roll over, and return, unspeaking, to the beach.

  That night, with the full moon high above the shimmering bay, they suddenly start up in the cave beside their fire: they have both, in the same instant, heard it—the different, ominous change of sound in the sea. From the mouth of the cave they look out across the bay. It takes some time before their eyes get used to the moonlight. Then they see the waves of the spring tide swelling from deep in the heart of the bay, breaking over the black jagged rocks of the little island, flooding it until nothing is left of it and everything lies buried under a moving mass of dark and sparkling water.

  “No, it's too dangerous,” he says.

  They have left the beach far behind. Here, towards the west, where they are exploring the coast, the landscape becomes increasingly wild, the cliffs running down right into the sea in ridge upon ridge of reddish black rocks: the farthest ridges hazy with vapor against the early sun. In one place there must have been a flaw in the formation causing the entire cliff side to subside in some prehistoric cataclysm, leaving a petrified cataract of boulders all the way up.

  “There's a narrow kloof farther on which will take us to the top,” he says.

  But she is adamant to climb the breach.

  “Look,” she says, “It's just like huge steps. We can run up in a few minutes. It's very solid.”

  “How do you know?”
/>   “I want to go up here.”

  It isn’t really an argument; yet it has a grave undertone. Not active resistance on her part, just the old stubbornness—she acknowledges it almost with joy—reviving in her after the long passivity. You know this coast so well, you’re the leader in all our excursions, teaching me everything you know: but you cannot force your will on me in all things. I’m here too. Don’t you recognize me? I must pit my will against yours. I insist on going up here.

  “Come on,” he orders.

  “No.” She scrambles up the first series of boulders, away from him.

  “Elisabeth, listen to me!”

  With gleeful determination she climbs farther, light-footed, jumping from stone to stone. High up the rocky slope, her legs wide apart to balance herself on an overhanging boulder, she stops to look down at him, her body white against the brown and grey of the stones, with a touch of redness caused by her first exposure to the sun. In this newly won freedom of nakedness, still exhilaratingly self-conscious, it excites her to look down at him like this, defying him.

  He follows her a little way, climbing cautiously, hampered by the gun he's carrying.

  “Come back!”

  “Come up to me. You see how easy it is?”

  She turns away again, calling out involuntarily when she stumbles and grazes a knee or when her ankle gets caught between smaller stones. But nothing can hold her back now. Actually, she is so confident that he will be following her, that it comes as a disappointment when she stops to look back again and sees him still standing far below.

  “Adam!” she calls.

  He waves: come back!

  She jumps from her perch to go higher. Not that there is any hurry. She will have to wait for him up there. Having had her way makes her feel a bit ludicrous in the circumstances. But she refuses to turn back.

  She is less cautious now; and jumping to another rock, momentarily losing her balance and grabbing the edge of a boulder to steady herself, she kicks loose a few stones under her. For a moment it doesn’t seem serious. Then a large rock, hit by the falling stones, is dislodged and tumbles down, setting a spray of sparks flying as it strikes other rocks in its way. And suddenly there is a rumbling below her, a slow shudder all the way down the breach in the cliff wall; and in front of her eyes, wide open with horror, the whole rocky mass begins to move and slide down the slope. She herself is safe, clinging to a ledge of the cliff itself. But everything else is sliding, subsiding, tumbling down in one unending avalanche.

  “Adam!” she screams. “Look out!”

  All she can see is a cloud of red dust; and then an eruption of foam as the landslide hits the sea.

  He is dead. She knows it. Just like that: violently, absurdly.

  And all for nothing. For this senseless urge in her not to yield, to match her will with his. What is it in her that drives her on to this? A yearning for an apocalypse was what he called it, that distant day in the Cape. What was it that urged her to rebel against her parents and marry Larsson and trek into the wilderness with a man she hardly knew and couldn’t fathom? What spell was it that was cast over her at the river when she insisted on driving the ox into the flood? And how many times will it still happen? How many more lives will she plunge into an abyss?

  She stares down the slope, her fists clenched, her teeth cutting into her lower lip. The dust dies down. In a trance, she begins to climb down, from stone to stone, knowing it's even more dangerous now than before but not caring in the least; almost wishing the avalanche would start again and bury her. Bruising and grazing her naked body, she stumbles on, blindly, down to where the waves are breaking against the foot of the red cliffs.

  He is sitting far away from the breach when she reaches the bottom; trying to straighten the twisted metal of the gun-barrel, his face tightly drawn; he barely looks up when she approaches.

  Her legs give way under her. She sits down and begins to cry.

  With an angry movement he hurls away the useless gun and looks at her. He comes to her and takes her in his arms, holding her tightly against him, waiting for her frenzied sobbing to subside, doing his utmost to control himself.

  “It's all right,” he says at last, his voice still trembling. “It's all over. It was very close.”

  “You’re not dead,” she whispers.

  “No. I saw it coming. The cliff protected me. Skinned my knees when I dived out of the way.” He shows her his bleeding legs. “But that's nothing. Only the gun has had it.”

  “Adam, I…” She doesn’t know what to say.

  “Don’t try it again,” he says. “Next time we may not be so lucky.”

  From all our excursions we return, wind-blown, to the cave which closes round us like a fist. This is the space in which, fleetingly, ineffably, we meet and recognize and explore each other. Small miraculous moments when I no longer ask or try to understand what is happening. When it is enough, almost too much to bear, simply to be alive and to know we are alive. In between I must subsist on memories and hope: and both are dangerous. All I know of you I know here. If ever we should go away from here I may lose it. You see, I am frightened. Moreover, the nights are getting colder.

  He is sitting with outstretched legs on the lip of the cave, leaning his back against the rock, peacefully smoking his reed-pipe: a mixture of wild hash and herbs. Absorbed, even with slight amusement, he watches her working, cutting up the carcass of the buck in the way he has demonstrated to her, the tip of her tongue protruding from her lips, a frown of concentration between her eyes. Her hands and wrists are slithery with blood, but with a small grunt of satisfaction she finally manages to sever the thick muscle from the bone, cut meticulously along the seams, the bluish membrane covering it practically unscathed.

  “Is that right?” she asks, glowing with contentment, as she comes over to him and kneels beside him to show him her handwork.

  “Very good,” he says, taking the piece of meat from her, turning it over. “Only try to cut more neatly along the back, here, where the tendon is joined to the bone.”

  “I’ll make sure next time.”

  “You’re coming on very well.” He looks at her kneeling in front of him, and with a sudden movement takes her hands in his.

  “My hands are dirty.”

  He kisses her. “That's all right. Blood is healthy.” He opens his hands and looks at them, smudged by hers. With only the suggestion of a smile on his grave face he places his open palms on her bare shoulders. She shudders slightly, but keeps looking bravely into his eyes. Slowly he moves his hands downward, until they come to rest on her breasts, smearing her smooth skin with blood. He sees her bite on her teeth, but she makes no move to resist. Under his palms he feels her nipples stiffening.

  “Why do you do it?” he asks at last.

  “I don’t know. Just because.”

  She keeps looking at him, searching, never quite sure about his intentions.

  Suddenly he smiles and removes his hands. “Go and finish your work,” he says.

  “I’m tired.”

  “You can’t stop halfway.”

  She gets up reluctantly, taking the biltong from him. “At home the kitchen slave used to…” She stops, guilty.

  With narrowed eyes he studies her, but he makes no answer. Crestfallen, she goes back to the carcass and resumes her work.

  “Do we really need it?” she asks after some time.

  “What?”

  “All the game you keep on bringing home.”

  “We need the skins. And the meat will be useful in winter.”

  “Are we going to stay here?”

  “I don’t know,” he answers casually. “Depends on the weather.”

  “Adam.”

  He blows out smoke, looking at her.

  “Aob,” she says.

  “What is it?”

  “Let's stay here.”

  “I told you it depends on the weather.”

  “I don’t mean for the winter. I mean: for ever. Why shou
ld we ever go away from here?”

  “I thought you wanted to go back to the Cape?”

  “I wanted to—before. Not now. Neither of us needs the Cape any more.” Adding, with unexpected intensity: “I can’t go back any more. Don’t you understand? It's quite impossible.”

  He looks at her, searching and urgent, but doesn’t answer.

  Almost breathless, she hurries on: “We’re so happy here, we’re together, we don’t need anything from outside.”

  “Will you always think that way?”

  “As long as you stay with me. We can live here. We can clean out the cave and furnish it. We can have children. You can teach them everything you taught me. In the daytime you’ll take the boys to the forest, or to your nets in the sea; and the girls and I will tidy the cave and make mats and baskets and karosses and things. Perhaps we can find some clay, then I’ll try to make pots. We’ll fetch water and look after you. At night we’ll all sleep together round the fire. We can make music together. We’ll gather shells, and lie on the beach, and swim.” She is carried away by her own passionate argument. “Do let's stay here!” she pleads. “We don’t ever need to do anything else. It would be ridiculous to go away from here, back to the Cape. We’ve taken all that off with our clothes.”

  He comes to her, still with his strange, wry smile: “Just us two savages in the wilderness?”

  “We’ll love each other and be good to one another.”

  “In that case we may stay here. All right. Until, one day, we’ll forget that there has ever been a Cape.”

  She looks into the strangeness of his eyes. Is he mocking her? Is he cynical? Sardonic? Or is he just as serious as herself?

  On her soft nipples the dry blood has become black and hard: scabs on vulnerable wounds.

  The body of the snake is drying out, its skin turned into a leathery flimsy parchment torn in places, frayed by the wind. And through the faded green the ribbed pattern of the inside is beginning to emerge.