This Life by Karel Schoeman Read Free Book Online Page B

with its changeable winds andits 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 rubynecklace 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