An Instant in the Wind

by Andre Brink

  But she is adamant: “Once we’re through here, it will be better. It's because it will be so easy on the other side that we have to suffer here.”

  “Every time you think we’ve passed the worst,” he reminds her. “And every time it gets worse still.”

  “This time I’m sure.” She is sucking a spot on her wrist where she has painfully grazed herself. “One day we’ll bring our children back here to show them.”

  “Then we’d better have baboons, not children,” he laughs.

  “Oh, we’ll make ourselves a nice smooth road here so that we can come by wagon.”

  “What about sprouting wings? It’ll be easier to fly over.”

  “Doesn’t it say in the Bible that if one has faith one can move a mountain to the sea?”

  “Well, why don’t you shift it right there now?” he says. “It can take us with it—all the way to the Cape.”

  She chuckles; then sighs. “It would have been much easier if one really had faith, wouldn’t it? In God, or in the Devil. Then one could say: The Devil has put this mountain in our way. Or: It's God's way of afflicting us, or of punishing us.” With new intensity she asks: “Do you think we are being punished for something?”

  “For running away from the Cape?”

  “But we’re on our way back. Surely that should compensate.”

  “It doesn’t look like it.”

  “It really would have been easier,” she sighs. “Just to resign oneself to what God or Satan has decreed… Let Thy will be done.” She shakes her head and is silent for a while, before she looks up at him again. “But for us who have to bear everything ourselves—we must get through all on our own.”

  It is as if the strange seclusion in the mountain forces them to discuss what, on the plains, it was possible to suppress.

  “Why do you really want to go back?” he asks.

  “You know it as well as I do. Because it's better to be there than here.”

  “You find it hard to renounce the idea of heaven, don’t you?”

  “Not heaven. But something better than we have. If it hadn’t been for that…”

  “You see?” He laughs briefly. “You’re still trying your best to change the world by thinking it a better place.”

  “Because I’m human.”

  “Or because you’re white?”

  “You have no right to say that, Adam!” Impulsively she thrusts out her hand, holding it next to his. “Look: I’m nearly as brown as you.”

  “Do you think white is a color?” he asks.

  She gets up slowly. “Do you mean—you’re beginning to have doubts about going back?”

  “Don’t you ever have doubts?”

  “But we decided…”

  “Of course.” He takes her shoulders in his hands. “Do you know that sometimes I wake up at night, thinking of the Cape—and then I cannot go to sleep again?”

  “Because you’re afraid?”

  “Because I don’t know what will happen.”

  “Will you abandon me?” she asks quietly.

  “How can I? Can one abandon oneself? We’ll be saved together. Or go into hell together. It will happen by itself: it no longer depends on either of us.”

  “I don’t ever want to be without you again,” she says.

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  She clutches his arms, shaking him, trying to convince him forcibly. “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you. But we’re not there yet. We’re here.”

  She looks up at the cliffs. An eagle is circling above. Then it disappears without a trace and the sky remains unmoved. She thrusts herself against him, blindly, wildly, her small breasts pressing against his chest, his palms open on her hips, moving in a slow caress to the fine down at the bottom of her spine where the swelling of her buttocks begins. She makes a moaning sound, her mouth half-opened, staining his arm with her saliva.

  “Adam?” she whispers.

  “Why do you call me Adam?”

  “It's your name.”

  “My name is Aob.”

  “For me you’re Adam. That's how I learnt to know you. If I called you Aob it would change you into someone else, a stranger.”

  “But it's my own name.”

  “When you’re inside me, sometimes, quite suddenly, yes, then I can call you Aob. But mostly you’re Adam.”

  “I’m Adam for the Cape.”

  With a shy, shivery smile, her eyes unnaturally bright and her cheeks flushed, she moistens a finger in the slit of her sex and touches him on his forehead, between his eyes. “I’m baptizing you again,” she says. “Now your name is Adam. For me.”

  Still standing, supporting her hips with his hands, and with a mere lowering and a thrust of his body he enters hers, his eyes pressed tightly shut; standing almost without moving, clutching her to him with terrible intensity, until she starts whimpering and swaying in his arms and he feels his own climax coming, release, momentary redemption, trembling on his feet, leaning against her.

  “Do you believe me now?” she whispers.

  “I believe you even if I know you’re lying.”

  The kloof probes ever more deeply, revealing more and more of the guts of the black mountain in patterns of rock or fern; until they reach a dead-end against a waterfall, a thin white veil of water down the cliffs, evaporating in a swaying spray.

  The only way out is up these slippery cliffs meeting behind the waterfall.

  What do I want, ultimately? Is it so much?—something permanent in a world of change, something certain in a world of possibilities: I believe all your lies unconditionally. We’re naked; we can easily fall to our death; we can break a bone on any stone. Deceit is easy and safe: to pretend to love, to comfort briefly, to go on unhurt. A contract: I shall give you this in exchange for that, a Cape in exchange for freedom—whereas… whereas… so it is that Adam Mantoor, freedman carpenter of the Lion's Rump, offers his services, quality guaranteed. The lords-of-nine-days may come and go, but I’ll stay: artisan at the Cape, respected, free, here's my letter with the seal of the Governor. I, Hendrick Swellengrebel, testify herewith, in the year of our Lord. But is that sufficient reason to return to the Cape? Dare one be fooled by that? I love you, here is my life, I’m holding yours in security: here is my hand, take it, let's jump into the abyss, whatever happens; even if we fall to death, let it at least be hand in hand.

  Inch by inch up the smooth wet rock-wall. Slowly: there's no hurry. So close to the stone one notices crevices and knobs and knuckles which never existed from afar. A crack large enough for four fingers; a toe-hold. Dragging up the bundles with thongs tied together. Just hold tight. The spray of the fall sweeps across them, leaving them shuddering with sudden cold. Is it for us the eagle is hovering above? One tends to think of death as something distant and abstract. Here it is so simple and immediate: death is this slippery rock, this root breaking under my grip, this eagle waiting above, this spray in my eyes. Almost reassuring in its nearness: it is so certain and secure, so dependable, so utterly truthful.

  Progressing from crack to crack, from ledge to ledge, diagonally up the smooth face of the cliff. Hold tight. If you slip, I fall with you. Even here are signs of life: small lizards, a bird brooding on a nest of speckled eggs, not paying any attention to us.

  “Can you manage?”

  “Yes. Just hold my hand.”

  “Right? Up you come!”

  “Thank you.”

  Words like pebbles.

  For a long time she remains lying on the top ridge, trembling but elated. Then on again, following a narrower, easier ravine to the summit. Before they reach it a movement among the rocks causes them to freeze with fright. Only when the sharp barking sound comes echoing down to them does Adam relax.

  “Baboons.”

  Following the warning of the leader the members of the pack come scurrying on from all sides, gathering on a high rock-formation to survey the approach of the strangers. It takes some time before th
ey are sufficiently reassured to return to their food-gathering among the shrubs, upturning stones in search of larvae or scorpions, stripping pods and berries and caterpillars from the branches, combing children and comrades in search of lice and fleas.

  For the first time since they’ve entered the mountains they feel relaxed and not oppressed, almost eager for the company of the baboons.

  “Once we’re up there it will be much easier, going down,” she says.

  But darkness overtakes them long before they have reached the summit and they are forced to find shelter among some overhanging rocks a few hundred yards below the baboons.

  They are still busy with their meal—the last of their honey, a rock rabbit he has shot with an arrow, a couple of small fishes from a pool in the river below—when pandemonium breaks out above them. Screams of terror, wild barking, stones tumbling down the slope sending sparks flying from rocks and echoing among all the cliffs of the mountain range. They jump up from where they have been sitting. Baboons come storming past them, fleeing in all directions, mothers clasping their young to their bellies, youngsters leaving trails of shit.

  It takes some time before they can make out what is going on. One young male comes galloping straight towards them, stopping in his tracks when he is almost on top of them, snarls and bares his huge fangs and swings round to escape—the next moment a spotted shadow flashes past the rocks where they are standing, overtaking the baboon. They are so close that they can see the mortal terror in his eyes as he screams; then the leopard is upon him, rolling in a cloud of dust. With the sharp sound of a breaking branch his neck and spine snap under the impact. They can see his mouth opening, and blood spouting from a severed jugular vein. An instant later the leopard is on his way up the slope again, dragging the carcass with him, while all the baboons higher up start chattering and screaming, assaulting the marauder with a hailstorm of stones.

  Adam discovers it just in time. Pulling Elisabeth in behind the rocks of their shelter, he keeps her out of reach of the stones until the noise subsides. A last few stones come crashing past. Then it is deadly silent, as if there has never been a sound in the mountains.

  They emerge from their hiding place, but it is already too late to see anything. The leopard must have disappeared over the nearest hill-top or hidden in a thicket. Of the baboons there is no sign except for the yellow shit marking their flight and the pool of blood where the male was struck down.

  “So close to us,” she says, stunned, staring at the blood. “If we’d gone higher, he might have grabbed one of us.”

  “He's gone away,” he says, comforting her; but she can hear from his voice that he's been scared too.

  “Did you hear how he screamed? It was just like a man.”

  “It was all over in a second,” he says laconically, taking her arm. “Come. It's getting dark.”

  “Do you think the leopard will come back?”

  “No. But we can’t stay here in the open.”

  He leads her back to their shelter.

  “You haven’t finished your food yet,” he says.

  She shakes her head. “I can’t. Not now.”

  “Please,” he urges. “You’ll need it. There's another tough day ahead.”

  “Tomorrow the baboons will be feeding on the slope again,” she says, staring into the deepening dusk. “Do you think they’ll still remember? Or do they forget very easily?”

  He shrugs.

  After some time, more collected, she says: “Perhaps it is better that way, so suddenly. One moment of terror and pain, and then it's all over. It's better than growing as old as that old Hottentot woman and being left in a hole to die slowly.”

  “The old woman who found me after the snake had bitten me…” he says, pensive. “She’d also been left by her people to die on the way. But I kept her alive. For months on end I stayed with her, moving on very slowly so as not to tire her too badly. But in the end she died—two days before we reached the new village of her tribe.” He is quiet for a long time before he resumes in the same distant voice. “I tried to do everything for her which I’d not been able to do for my grandmother. But then she died too. I couldn’t understand it. I felt so angry and hurt and rebellious. Long after I’d buried her I tried to keep her alive by thinking about her. But what's the use?”

  “You’re alive,” she says emphatically. “We’re alive. And we’re going on.”

  “Do you think we’ll grow old together in the Cape? Until, one day

  “At least they won’t bury us in porcupine holes. Not alive.”

  “Is that the worst that can happen?” he asks.

  “It's worse than the death of the baboon.”

  “But we’re not baboons.”

  “It almost sounds as if you regret it,” she says, trying to sound lighthearted.

  “Maybe I do.”

  It is quite dark now. They snuggle in under their karosses, close together.

  “Tomorrow we’ll reach the top,” she says sleepily.

  But it is not the top. When they reach what has seemed like the summit there is yet another slope beyond, leading to another, higher, ridge; and then still more, an endless confusion of mountains. Still they push on. They no longer talk glibly about tomorrow, or the other side. They just go on grimly. And at last they come upon a new kloof which also, ages ago, must have borne a river, and following its tortuous course through the mountains, they gradually see the walls of rock recede and dwindle, until one afternoon after they reach the last bend and discover the new land before them, still a hundred feet or so below their feet.

  In silence they look out over it, exploring it with their eyes; parched and waterless, with whirlwinds sending small whorls of white dust dancing across the earth and dissolving in the colorless sky; patches of brownish shrubs close to the ground; red koppies like the fossils of giant lizards, ridges, bare stretches, a hazy distance obliterating the horizon.

  They do not look at one another. They do not say a word. They can only stare, their eyes wide open.

  To turn back is impossible. They have no choice; they must go on.

  “I’m going to marry Erik Alexis Larsson,” she announced at table.

  “It's completely out of the question!” said her mother. “I’ve never heard of such madness.”

  “I’m going,” she insisted.

  “Use your authority, Marcus,” Catharina ordered. “What will our friends think of it? A woman in the interior!”

  “What's wrong with a woman in the interior?” she asked heatedly. “What's wrong with a woman anyway? Is it something to be ashamed of?”

  “Married to a man with no ambition,” her mother said with unrestrained bitterness. “Two children in the grave, my two sons who would have made all the difference. Bruised by this land, broken by it. But you, Elisabeth: you’re used to a decent way of life, you’re held in esteem, you’re an example to others.”

  “You make it sound as if I’m descending into hell. It's only the interior.”

  Hands are lovely, and lovelier still returning from journeys of love. She is holding his hand between hers on her drawn-up knees, her back against the ironstone of a koppie where they are sheltering in the afternoon shade. With a forefinger she traces the pattern of his palm, wishing she knew how to read it (what did the gypsy woman in Amsterdam foretell?). One is supposed to be a lifeline, another a loveline, a third the line of fortune: which is this one breaking off so short? With hopeless love she presses his palm against her lips, wanting to cry. Happiness and suffering are what remains now. To this journey we have been doomed, each of us vast as a desert landscape, pure infinity; interiority. Particulars are for those who are content with facts and faults.

  Spread out on the skins of their opened bundles, exposed for inspection:

  2 karosses

  2 aprons

  2 skinbags

  2 ostrich egg-shells

  1 hunting knife

  1 pistol with a small bag of ammunition

 
6 arrows in a quiver

  1 assegai

  2 sticks

  1 broken cooking pot

  1 tinder-box

  a small collection of seashells, some broken

  3 small bags of herbs

  1 bag of honey

  an assortment of roots, bulbs, tubers and edible leaves

  1 Cape dress

  “Can one survive here?”

  “Not if one is alone. But if we stick together…”

  We must survive, in this landscape which conceals nothing—red and brown and white nearby, a grayish ochre from a distance, the farthest koppies on the horizon a dull blue. Stones, cheeky ground-squirrels, praying mantises like dried twigs, occasionally a tortoise. Vultures steadily above; hunting spiders darting among the faded green-blue leaves of bitter succulents growing close to the ground; whirlwinds; sometimes the bare whiteness of bones. Extremes of heat and cold. An hour after rising the sun is like a white coal burning in one's eyes, sending lines of sweat trickling down the dust on one's skin; the earth is too glowing hot to set foot on and one's tongue stirs against a parched palate. Then, immediately after sunset it gets so cold that one has to huddle in a kaross, one's teeth chattering.

  On the cracked, baked mud of the dry river bed the old Bushman found him, half dead with thirst; kneeling in the gorreh he sucked dirty water from the dust and spat it out in his mouth; the taste of life. And then he trotted off again, into the shimmering mirages, his bow in his hand, and the quiver of arrows over his shoulder. That was what surprised him most of all: not the miracle of the water from stohe and hard earth, but that the Bushman, the Saan, the despicable Koetsri, the dreaded enemy with the arrows, had deigned to offer him water. What else could he do but to take on him the burden of the old woman, trying to take her back to her tribe, later, after she’d saved his life?