by Andre Brink
“What are you digging here in the rubble for?” asked Adam, surprised.
“I think I’ve been here before,” she admitted for the first time. “I’m still not sure, everything looked different then. But I think it's the same place.”
“It's possible.” He shrugged. “In fact, you could hardly have taken any other way.”
She felt rather foolish, unable to explain to herself why it was so important to her to know. But day after day, as they went on, she continued to inspect their surroundings with great concentration—so intently, in fact, that more than once she stumbled over a branch or stone in her way. Every now and then she turned round to look back: for this would have been the view she’d had of it before. If only she’d been more interested then. But, of course, she had been half-dozing on the wagon most of the time, or curled up in a sullen bundle, allowing the landscape to drift past unnoticed: and now she was walking every yard of it, experiencing every stone, every old broken branch, every moving tortoise, every lizard, every lark in the early morning.
For long stretches she would wander on with her head bowed, scrutinizing the ground immediately in front of her feet, looking for wagon trails cut into the hard soil, flattened branches, discarded objects. Something, anything: the barest sign to reassure her that she’d really passed that way before.
But there was nothing. Not the slightest indication or admission by the landscape that it acknowledged her, that it was aware of her. It was like the sea the day they’d found the snake and came back to discover their tracks obliterated by the foam. Nothing. Just nothing.
And yet I know I’ve been here before. However stern and uncommunicative the land may be: I know it. Unless my memory is false? By what am I led, in what do I recognize my past, where do I store all the evidence of my past moments? Only in this body walking on through space? Have I no more than this? How can I rely on it? Is everything really, finally, reduced to faith?
At night she dreamt; in the daytime she walked on, remembering, recalling. A night of festive sound, and music, and people, very far away, beyond doors and walls and rooms. An illuminated garden, an orchestra, people dancing, tables laden with food, laughter, wine, slave girls undressing her; and she naked in the big brass bed, the white embroidered nightdress folded up at her feet. Don’t you realize I’m waiting? I want to hang out the sheets in the morning, glad with new blood: look, I’ve become a woman, I’ve changed into something different, something new, I have become myself. “I thought you’d be sleeping.” I’ve been waiting for you.” “Is that all?” “What?” “Is that all-just this?” “I don’t understand you.” “I don’t either.”
You see? I can remember every word. That's how it was. That's how I remember it all: it really happened.
Something forced her to finally discuss it with Adam, to rid herself of everything she had—almost with shame—stored up in her, desiring to look at it with his eyes, objectively.
“The day the lion charged him—1 think that was what really decided it; it was our breaking point,” she said.
“But you went on for quite a long time after that, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But by then—we were together on the wagon only because it was unavoidable. Everything which happened afterwards was already decided.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was so ludicrous. The lion charging him, Booi killing it right on top of him and nearly getting killed himself in the process. There he was, with the lion on him. And suddenly he jumped up and started running away for all he was worth, scrambling up a sapling which was too light for him. Every time he reached the top, it dropped him back on his feet.” She laughed, but without joy.
“Why should that have been such a shock to you?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t even think I realized it consciously at the time. Only afterwards. The image of that great scientist, that famous explorer whose name would surely become a household word all over the world— running his arse off like that. The man who possessed part of the world, who knew the names of all things, the crown of creation: there he was climbing up a ridiculous little tree to escape from a dead lion.”
She deliberately wanted to see it like that, to phrase it as crudely and as cruelly as she could. To renew the shock for herself and stir up the initial passion.
After a while, more subdued, she continued: “You see, when I married him it wasn’t only to escape. I wanted to believe in him. I realized afterwards that I should have known it all along. But I wanted to believe in him. If I had to accept being a woman after all, if I really had to resign myself to the role I’d been brought up for, then, at least, I wanted to be woman to a man I could respect. He had to be a man, a full human being. If I could be nothing but a woman, then he had to convince me that being a woman was important enough to live for. I didn’t want everything to be a gross lie. And then, slowly, it changed. I tried to hold on to it, it was all I had. But that day… because it was so silly, so ridiculous, I could no longer deny it.” She wiped the perspiration from her face. “It's strange, you know: that night it was he who came to lie with me, trying to caress me, one of the rare nights he ever seemed to desire me; he was incredibly passionate, he couldn’t control himself. But then it was I who refused him.”
It was the third ruin which brought the final confirmation, not by its similarity with the past but its shocking difference. The first two had been, even in her recollection of the wagon journey, completely decayed, sunken into the earth—melancholy, forgettable signs of people who’d tried to find a foothold in that barren interior and failed, moving on and on, driven through the hard land like tumbleweeds in the wind. But this third one was different. It had been different. When she and Larsson had passed that way, there had been people, she was quite sure of it. If this was the place, it had been inhabited—and they’d camped in the yard. In the evening they’d had pumpkin for supper, scooped from a single communal dish, mainly by hand; and bread soaked in milk; and biltong which the thin man had carved for them. There had been fields outside, beautifully green in the green landscape—but that, of course, had been a year ago—and wooden kraals for cattle and goats.
The people had been more talkative than the others on their journey, more impoverished too, it seemed, but more generous; and they laughed a lot, although Larsson didn’t share in it. He found them rather dirty, while they showed very little interest in his exploits. Still, they welcomed the small gift of brandy and tobacco he offered them, and the woman was enraptured by the beads.
The man was white, his wife a freed slave woman. His father—if Elisabeth remembered correctly—had been an important farmer in the Stellenbosch district, planning a great future for his many sons. But this particular son, the third or fourth in the line, had bitterly disappointed him. Not content merely to make use of the slave girls at his disposal on the farm, he’d had the temerity to announce that he was in love with this girl and wanted to marry her. In the end the old man had allowed them to have their way, advancing the youngster enough of his inheritance to buy the freedom of the girl. The only condition was, not wanting to be disgraced in the eyes of all his neighbors, that they had to leave the farm. And so they set out, trekking from one place to the other until, in this valley, as far as possible from the Cape, they settled happily. Here they were determined to stay on, with their four small children and their fields and vegetable garden and their cattle.
But now their cottage was disintegrating; one portion of the roof had already caved in, and the chimney lay broken on the hearth. There were still signs of kraals and withered fields, but that was all.
Fled from the drought? Wiped out by Bushmen? Or had they simply trekked on, forever wandering?
She couldn’t even recall what they looked like. Only something of the atmosphere: the lamplight at table that evening, the children sleeping in a row before the hearth, the woman smiling as she fed the chickens in the backyard, the man fondling a lamb between his legs, patiently teaching it to
suck his fingers. What did it really matter? They’d been there—if this was really the place!—and now they were gone. It upset her more than the change in the landscape. The flowers and the grass had gone; the people had gone. But when it rained again the grass and flowers would emerge from the dust, like before. The people? She and Erik Alexis Larsson had come this way: now she was the only one to return, with Adam. If one of them were to come back here, years from now, who would it be?
“Sometimes,” she said to him, “I wonder whether his death wasn’t really my fault.”
She didn’t pronounce his name; it wasn’t necessary.
“What makes you say that?” Adam asked, frowning.
“Didn’t I drive him to it? By cutting myself off from him, by not caring any more?”
“He was following a bird,” he said emphatically, trying to coax her from her somber mood. “He got lost. What could you have done to prevent it?”
They were sitting on the doorstep of the ruined cottage, having decided to stay over for a day so he could cut them new footskins while they recovered in the shade.
She looked out to where the kraals had been. “This Van Zyl who came with us…” she said, not really addressing him. “It was the same with him.”
“How do you mean it was the same?”
“Haven’t I told you about him?”
“All I know was that he was on the trek with you. That he’d lied about knowing the country. And that he made a nuisance of himself, quarrelling with your husband.”
“Yes, he was a stupid fool. But he meant well. He was very young still. I suppose that was why he lied about being a guide: he was so eager to see the world.”
“Did you get along with him?”
“Not really. He was rather tongue-tied. But when one is all alone in the wilderness with no one else to talk to—and him always working on his map and his journals and his collections…”
“Did he make love to you?” he asked, suddenly suspicious.
She shrugged.
“What did he do?” he urged.
“It's not so much what he did…” She looked at him, her cheeks glowing slightly through her tan. “We chatted a bit, he would fetch and carry for me, nothing important. But I noticed the way he was looking at me. Constantly. In the beginning it irritated and upset me. I felt like shouting at him to stop it. But gradually, as my husband got more and more involved in his work and had less and less time for me… it was almost reassuring to know that at least there was somebody interested in me. Looking at me.” After a pause: “Perhaps even—desiring me.”
“And then you… ?”
“No!” she said quickly. “I was married. I had my duty. I couldn’t be unfaithful to my husband. It's just that—well, it begins to burn one up inside.” Almost defiant, she looked at him. “It was only a game, a distraction. It amused me and made me feel a bit better. Perhaps that was the worst: that it was no more than a game, not seriously meant at all. To see how far I could tempt him, the way one holds a burning stick to see how close to one's fingers it can burn down before you throw it away.”
He moved against her.
“And then you got burnt?”
“No, I didn’t. In fact, nothing happened to me. It remained a game till the end. Accidentally brushing against him as I came past. Allowing him to catch a brief glimpse when I was bathing. But it became too much for him. He demanded more. Suddenly he was no longer content with games. One day he grabbed me. I was scared and began to struggle, and I called out. My husband came running on. There was a terrible fight. Van Zyl managed to tear himself loose and ran off into the bush. And shot himself.” For a while she sat looking at the world growing darker around them. “It was really my fault. I never meant anything like that to happen, I never expected it. But it happened, and it was my fault. After that there were quarrels all the time. I could no longer stand him touching me. And when he became aware of it, all of a sudden he wanted—what he’d never wanted before. I refused him. He took to wandering off into the woods at all times, and all by himself. In search of birds or insects. Until he got lost. Do you think that was my fault too?”
“You can’t change anything by thinking about it,” he said. “You’re just making it impossible for yourself.”
“But I’m frightened of myself, of what I cannot understand about myself.”
“Don’t try. Leave it to me to understand you.”
She thought: for all the others I’ve been no more than a woman, a game, a toy. You’re the first to whom I am a person. That is why I dare be a woman to you. And yet there's something in me I cannot grasp and which I fear.
After the ruin the landscape became even more arid. Previously there had been rare patches of grayish green bushes huddled on subterranean water; narrow streams no longer flowing, but still containing, here and there among the stones, pools of water. Now, as the valley between the mountain ranges began to spread out into ever wider plains, the earth became bone-dry. Day after day there were vultures, sometimes distant, at other times quite close; there was death in the land. Game was getting more scarce. Tortoises, lizards, snakes. Sometimes the cry of a bustard or the screeching of guinea-fowls. Buck or gnus or zebras only on rare occasions. The earth was parched, the sand and rocks burning; erosion ditches lay across their road like gaping wounds.
All the time they kept on believing it would become more green and lush ahead, that the clouds would collect in the sky and bring rain and change the aspect of the world. It was the right season, after all. It had to come, sooner or later—it was only a matter of waiting patiently.
But the sky became more and more bleached as they proceeded, white like ashes; in the daytime the ground was so hot that it burnt their feet through the thick skins they wore. At daybreak there were a few hours they could walk on, and again at dusk. But their progress was becoming more precarious. No longer able to count on finding water every day, they were forced to carry a supply with them in Adam's skin bag and a couple of calabashes. But it was very little, never lasting more than a few brief laps of their slow trek. It worried him that their energy was running so low. They couldn’t risk a long stretch at a time any more.
Once there simply was no choice, when after two full days walking they’d finished all their water. Now they had to go on, whatever lay ahead, otherwise they would die of thirst right there.
The morning star had just come out when he awakened her. She sighed in her sleep, rolling over, groping for the security of his body next to hers; only then did she realize that she had to get up. There was still a bit of jackal's food left which he’d dug out the day before; they chewed the tough roots for food and moisture, but their palates still felt dusty as they took up their bundles to set out.
“Do you think we’ll find water today?” she asked.
“We’d better.” Seeing her clench her teeth in desperation, he touched her briefly, soothingly, reassuring her. “I’m sure we’ll find some.”
In the dawn's comparative cool they progressed swiftly and far, sending up small clouds of dust under their feet. As soon as the sun rose it was hot, with sweat stinging between their shoulders. But they went on. This was the time they usually stopped to rest and eat on other days; today they ate as they walked on: thin strips of dried biltong saved for emergencies. But it aggravated their thirst; they could hardly gather enough saliva for swallowing the bits.
The sun rose higher, hitting them horizontally in the eyes, their shadows jumping jerkily after them, black on the white dust. From time to time he stopped to look round. In the distance, below the northern mountains, specks of vultures were circling. He tried to ignore them, in search of a trickling river bed, a patch of green, anything hopeful. But there was nothing.
By the time the sun was overhead she could hardly go on. Glancing at her, he saw her pale through the tan of her face, perspiration shining on her upper lip, thin wisps of hair clinging moistly to her forehead.
“Want to rest?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I can go on.”
They walked on, more slowly now, but at an even pace.
Her whole body felt dusty, sticky. She thought: I used to change my clothes twice a day, coming this way on Larsson's wagon. I bathed myself mornings and evenings, because I couldn’t stand the dirt. Now look at the filth covering me. Is this really me?
At times it felt as if she no longer occupied her body but rose from it, lightly, gliding out ahead of it or rising up high to look down on herself, her movement: the rhythmic strides of her legs, the swinging of arms, breasts bobbing. Rising higher in the currents of air sustaining her, higher than the mountains, spying on those two specks below moving on and on, like ants.
The sun moved over, striking their shoulders with dazzling nails of light. She stumbled over a stone. He caught her hand.
“Can you go on?”
“Yes. I…” But standing beside him she was panting. And when she closed her eyes for a moment, she swayed on her feet.
“There are some bushes ahead. We can rest there.”
