This Life by Karel Schoeman Read Free Book Online Page A

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