John joins in the game too. He is better at cricket than Lukas, more practised, one can see that at a glance, but children don’t warm to him. Nor do dogs, she has noticed. Unlike Lukas, not a father by nature. An alleenloper, as some male animals are: a loner. Perhaps it is as well he has not married.
Unlike Lukas; yet there are things she shares with John that she can never share with Lukas. Why? Because of the childhood times they spent together, the most precious of times, when they opened their hearts to each other as one can never do later, even to a husband, even to a husband whom one loves more than all the treasure in the world.
Best to cut yourself free of what you love, he had said during their walk — cut yourself free and hope the wound heals. She understands him exactly. That is what they share above alclass="underline" not just a love of this farm, this kontrei, this Karoo, but an understanding that goes with the love, an understanding that love can be too much. To him and to her it was granted to spend their childhood summers in a sacred space. That glory can never be regained; best not to haunt old sites and come away from them mourning what is for ever gone.
Being wary of loving too much is not something that makes sense to Lukas. For Lukas, love is simple, wholehearted. Lukas gives himself over to her with all his heart, and in return she gives him all of herself. With this body I thee worship. Through his love her husband brings out what is best in her: even now, sitting here drinking tea, watching him at play, she can feel her body warming to him. From Lukas she has learned what love can be. Whereas her cousin … She cannot imagine her cousin giving himself wholeheartedly to anyone. Always a quantum held back, held in reserve. One does not need to be a dog to see that.
It would be nice if Lukas could take a break, if she and he could spend a night or two here on Voëlfontein. But no, tomorrow is Monday, they must be back at Middelpos by nightfall. So after lunch they say their goodbyes to the aunts and uncles. When John’s turn comes she hugs him tight, feeling his body against her tense, resistant. ‘Totsiens’, she says: Goodbye. ‘I’m going to write you a letter and I want you to write back.’ ‘Goodbye,’ he says. ‘Drive safely.’
She begins the promised letter that same night, sitting in her dressing gown and slippers at the table in her own kitchen, the kitchen she married into and has come to love, with its huge old fireplace and its ever-cool, windowless larder whose shelves still groan with jars of jam and preserves she laid in last autumn.
Dear John, she writes, I was so cross with you when we broke down on the Merweville road — I hope it didn’t show too much, I hope you will forgive me. All that bad temper has now blown away, there is no trace left. They say you don’t know a person properly until you have spent a night with him (or her). I am glad I had a chance to spend a night with you. In sleep our masks slip off and we are seen as we truly are.
The Bible looks forward to the day when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, when we will no longer need to be on our guard since we will have no more cause for fear. (Rest assured, you are not the lion, nor am I the lamb.)
I want to raise one last time the subject of Merweville.
We all grow old one day, and in the way we treat our parents we will surely be treated too. What goes around comes around, as they say. I am sure it is hard for you to live with your father when you have been used to living alone, but Merweville is not the right solution.
You are not alone in your difficulties, John. Carol and I face the same problem with our mother. When Klaus and Carol go off to America, the burden will fall squarely on Lukas and me.
I know you are not a believer, so I won’t suggest that you pray for guidance. I am not much of a believer either, but prayer is a good thing. Even if there is no one above to listen, one at least brings out the words, which is better than bottling things up.
I wish we had had more time to talk. Do you remember how we used to talk when we were children? It is so precious to me, the memory of those times. How sad that when our turn comes to die our story, the story of you and me, will die too.
I cannot tell you what tenderness I feel for you at this moment. You were always my favourite cousin, but it is more than that. I long to protect you from the world, even though you probably don’t need protecting (I am guessing). It is hard to know what to do with feelings like these. It has become such an old-fashioned relationship, hasn’t it, cousinship. Soon all the rules we had to memorize about who is allowed to marry whom, first cousins and second cousins and third cousins, will just be anthropology.
Still, I am glad we did not act on our childhood vows (do you remember?) and marry each other. You are probably glad too. We would have made a hopeless couple.
John, you need someone in your life, someone to look after you. Even if you choose someone who is not necessarily the love of your life, married life will be better than what you have now, with just your father and yourself. It is not good to sleep alone night after night. Excuse me for saying this, but I speak from bitter experience.
I should tear up this letter, it’s so embarrassing, but I won’t. I say to myself, we have known each other a long time, you will surely forgive me if I tread where I should not tread.
Lukas and I are happy together in every possible way. I go down on my knees every night (so to speak) to give thanks that his path crossed mine. How I wish you could have the same!
As if summoned, Lukas comes into the kitchen, bends down over her, presses his lips to her head, slips his hands under the dressing gown, cups her breasts. ‘My skat,’ he says: my treasure.
You can’t write that. You can’t. You are just making things up.
I’ll cut it out. Presses his lips to her head. ‘My skat,’ he says, ‘when are you coming to bed?’ ‘Now,’ she says, and lays down the pen. ‘Now.’
Skat: an endearment she disliked until the day she heard it from his lips. Now, when he whispers the word, she melts. This man’s treasure, into which he may dip whenever it pleases him.
They lie in each other’s arms. The bed creaks, but she could not care less, they are at home, they can make the bed creak as much as they like.
Again!
I promise, when I have finished I will hand over the text to you, the entire text, and let you cut out whatever you wish.
‘Was that a letter to John you were writing?’ says Lukas.
‘Yes. He is so unhappy.’
‘Maybe that’s just his nature. A melancholy type.’
‘But he used not to be. He used to be such a happy soul in the old days. If he could only find someone to take him out of himself!’
But Lukas is asleep. That is his nature, his type: he falls asleep at once, like an innocent child.
She would like to be able to join him, but sleep is slow in coming. It is as if the ghost of her cousin still lurks, calling her back to the dark kitchen to complete what she was writing to him. Have faith in me, she whispers. I promise I will return.
But when she wakes it is Monday, there is no time for writing, no time for intimacies, they have to set off at once on the drive to Calvinia, she to the hotel, Lukas to the transport depot. In the windowless little office behind the reception desk she labours over the backlog of invoices; by evening she is too exhausted to pursue the letter she was writing, and anyhow she has lost touch with the feeling. Am thinking of you, she writes at the foot of the page. Even that is not true, she has not given John a thought all day, she has had no time. Much love, she writes. Margie. She addresses the envelope and seals it. So. It is done.