Every winter we, like everyone from the Roggeveld, moved down to our outspan in the Karoo with the sheep and all our household effects. Usually early winter had already set in here on the escarpment, and sometimes the first sparse snowflakes were already whirling over the ridges as we toiled down Vloksberg Pass with the loaded wagon, driving the sheep ahead of us, and from the faded grey world of renosterbos and harpuisbos, slowly we toiled down the steep slopes of the mountainside, bouncing and jolting over the rocky ledges, to the mild air and herbaceous scents of the Karoo, to the veld where the geelbos glowed in the sun and thorn tree and karee provided shade against the heat of the day. On that particular day I am thinking of, it happened once again, as often did, that something broke along the way and had to be fixed, and so we reached the far end of the kloof with the sun already setting, still a long way from our destination; yet, with that peculiar stubbornness that sometimes took hold of Father, he decided that we should push on, even if it meant we would arrive only at midnight, and, as usual when that happened, Mother did not protest. Thus we were still on the road at dusk, and so I climbed into the wagon and, leaning against Dulsie, fell asleep, only vaguely conscious of the jolting motion of the wagon over the uneven ground and the scent of crushed vegetation under the wheels. I woke up to the sound of dogs barking, and Father shouting at the oxen to halt, and, still half asleep, I knelt and looked back from under the tented hood, vaguely aware of people and voices and the trampling of horses in the dark; and somewhere I saw a light, a flickering light bobbing through the dark, and a woman’s face appeared for a moment in the distance beyond the darkness as she raised the candle in her hand, before vanishing once more in the dark among the bewildering noise of voices and horses’ hoofs, while I remained kneeling there, dazed and awestruck, and in the end I probably fell asleep again. The oval of her face and the symmetry of her eyebrows and her dark eyes, visible for just a moment; but stamped into my memory forever.
We had got lost in the dark and arrived on the farm where Sofie’s people were camping that winter, on the near side of the kloof from our own outspan, and we must have spent the night there and taken the long way around the mountain to our own land the next morning, that was all that had happened. But that way, as I had seen her there with the candle in her hand, Jakob must also have seen her that evening, and Pieter must have seen her in the darkness for the first time, for the two of them had been on horseback, driving the sheep, and it must have been they who had been circling the wagon, invisible in the dark. Thus they, too, had seen her face as I had: did they also remember it till the end like me, did Jakob see it before him when he slipped and fell, his face against the rock; did Pieter carry it with him through the silence?
That is all I remember of that winter that distinguished it from other Karoo winters of my youth. As far as I know, we had never met Sofie’s people before, for her father was a wealthy man who owned several farms in the Karoo and the Bokkeveld, and it was the first time they had camped there for the winter, but they were practically our next-door neighbours, just around the mountain from us. Could it be that Jakob had ridden over to the neighbours? I suppose so, for it was only an hour on horseback by way of the shortcut through the kloof, and in winter people used to call on each other and entertain all the time: why would he not have called on her? Oom Wessel might have been a respected man, but likewise we were well-to-do people in the Roggeveld, and Jakob was the eldest son and heir and an attractive young man to boot, handsome with his dark eyes, despite being a bit surly and temperamental. On his gleaming black horse through the kloof in the moonlight to call on Sofie, the mild air sweet with the scent of shrubs — is this something I am imagining now, or could it be a distant recollection somewhere from the depths of my memory? It must also have been that very winter that he decided to marry her, or perhaps it was decided for him that this rich man’s daughter would be a suitable bride, for, as with everything that happened in our home, that, too, would have been considered and discussed, albeit not openly, and Jakob would not have acted without Mother’s approval, that much I do know. Was that how it happened? I am merely guessing now; more than half of what I know is speculation and assumption, and from stepping stone to stepping stone I traverse the past, uncertain of every footstep. Much different, however, it could not have been. “You’re the one who wanted it like that,” Father said to Mother without raising his eyes, and his voice was flat, but his hands were trembling as he picked up the Bible, and that was the only time I ever heard him reproach her and she grew suddenly pale and turned aside and made no reply. So, it must have been like that.
At the end of the winter we returned to the Roggeveld, and I suppose Jakob came with us to help with the trek, but he must have gone back shortly afterwards to fetch Sofie. They probably got married in Worcester, but none of us was there, though I know of no reason for it, only that they were already married when they came to us and that he led her into our circle as his wife. Anyway, it was still spring when she came, that bleak, treacherous spring with its changeable winds and its constant threat of cold and frost, the veld fleetingly bejewelled with colour and the dams glittering like lakes and marshes in the sun. We must have been expecting them earlier, for I remember that to me as a child it had seemed an endless wait, and when the dogs began to bark and we heard the horses outside, it was already dark, so that Dulsie stooped to pick up a burning branch from the hearth when we went outside to welcome them. That is how I saw her for the second time, just as she had appeared to me the first time, the oval of her face lit up for a moment by the flickering of a flame, before Jakob lifted her off the wagon-chest: that is how Sofie came to us.
A rich man’s daughter — who said that? It was at a wedding or a funeral, as usual, where the voices flowed together as I moved among the people without anyone noticing me or realising that I overheard their words, gathering information and collecting splinters to piece together a pattern. Father’s funeral, and the men discussing Maans — whose voice had it been? I can no longer identify it, nor put a face to it, it is only the words that I still remember: “But after all, she was also a rich man’s daughter”; for by that time both Maans’s grandfathers were dead, and he had inherited from them both. Yes, it must have been true, for it was clear that in the house where she had grown up, there had not been that painstaking effort to make ends meet that we were used to, and that everything she had needed had been supplied readily and generously, and in her conduct there was also a certain delicacy and refinement rarely found among people in our part of the world. Perhaps these things would not have been immediately apparent, but to us who shared a home with her they became clear enough, and I remember Mother, when she was annoyed, commenting to Father on the new daughter-in-law’s dainty little manners and whims. More money, more servants, more comforts, the few months she had spent at a boarding-school in Worcester and the satin dress and ruby necklace she had brought along in her trunk when she got married, all these things distinguished Sofie’s world from ours.
Was that why Mother, no matter how annoyed she sometimes became, still hesitated before Sofie, withdrawing at last in sullen silence without even trying to take her on. If there had to be conflict between the two of them, it seemed inevitable that Mother would be victorious, and since when had she ever shown reluctance to impose her will and have her orders obeyed? Why then did she, otherwise so passionate, so forceful, so domineering, hesitate before this girl and grant Sofie a measure of freedom never bestowed on her own children? It was not out of affection or respect, for Mother was fond of no one except Jakob; nor was it out of love, for Maans was the only one for whom Mother had ever felt love. At best Sofie was tolerated in our household, never accepted or even looked on with approval — no, it is not my imagination, though I can offer no proof of my opinion; I know I was no more than a child, but how could I not have been aware of such things in that house where our family lived together in five rooms and we women worked side by side day after day while the men were out? Why she had this almost privileged position among us, that I do not know, however, and only hesitantly can I try to explain it. Groping through the past, step by step along the invisible road, I remember the house in the Karoo where we arrived that evening and Sofie on the threshhold, the candle in her hand, Sofie in her satin dress on the dance floor, Sofie who had gone to school in Worcester and could read and write, and I remember Oom Ruben with his wretched wife and half-wild children and their strange submissiveness and animosity even towards those who were their kin. I struggle to form the thought, I find it difficult to say the words, and how could one ever associate a word like fear with Mother, she who remained fearless right up until that bitter and silent deathbed? But once again I wonder if this had not been what had remained concealed behind all Mother’s passion and ambition after all, and if this might not also have been the reason for her inexplicable indulgence towards Sofie: the sudden fear and uncertainty of a barefoot girl from a migrant family in the presence of the wealthy farming people on whose goodwill and mercy she and her family had been dependent all their lives? No one will ever know.