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My God, woman, Jak said, and threw back his head and closed his eyes for a moment.

Keep your eyes on the road, De Wet, you said.

That’s what you said, but you thought: I’m the one who directs everything, the roughly ranked rock faces, the dark waterway far below, the curves in the road, the clouds far above.

So what problems are these that your mother talks of, there on Grootmoedersdrift? Jak asked with a charged voice, and swallowed.

He shook his head as if he were seeing stars. You had a firm grip on him, long-term promises in your grasp.

Tulips, you said, and sat forward so that you could work your hand in under his testicles. After that you could never get enough of it. The contrast between the silky shifting balls and the immense length of the erect flesh above. You were fascinated by it, surprised that you knew what to do.

There are wild tulips next to the river, and if the cows eat them and they drink water afterwards, then they die as if you’d fed them arsenic. They’re little bulbs. You have to take them out by hand. If you plough them they just multiply.

Well then, said Jak, sounds easy enough. What else?

It’s too wet down there next to the river.

Hmmm, rather wet than dry, he teased.

The cows get sores and fungi and things on their hooves from it. The horses get mud-fever.

Mud-fever? Never heard of it. So what can one do, my handy farm wench?

Drain, drain extensively. In any case, you can’t plant grazing on waterlogged soil.

Still doesn’t sound like a disaster to me.

Well, and then there are the slopes on the dryland. It’s too steep to plough there. It washes away. We need contours there and terraces. And run-offs must be stabilised and grass courses laid on for the drainage.

You turned towards him and fumbled open his clothing and pulled down his underpants and added your other hand and made a quiver with your fingers.

Stabilised. Jak forced the word out.

It’s a surveyor’s job, you said, and it will take months.

You reckon, Jak said. God, I can’t hold out any longer!

He sat forward and accelerated, and with one hand folded your hands tighter around his penis. Between your legs it felt warm, your head was ringing.

You were only half aware of the road, the few cars ahead of you, the lorry.

Hold on, said Jak and started overtaking.

Jak, careful! You shouted, but you were feeling reckless, floating, a regent of the whole Tradouw, the near side and the far side of the mountain, in the valleys next to the rivers and over the roundbacked hills from the Heidelberg plain as far as Witsand. It swam in front of your eyes. Everything your domain. You felt your mouth, your throat, there was a tang on your tongue as if you’d eaten radishes.

In a shower of stones Jak pulled off the road in a lay-by on the mountain’s side and pressed you to him and kissed you and stroked your breasts. You thought of stopping him, the car’s roof was open and you were visible from the road. But you didn’t really care. You had a fantasy that your mother would see you. See with her own eyes how ownership and history and heritage all were finding their course, as it was predestined, with the brute energy of a good start. That was your movie. As you’d always wanted it, as you thought your mother had wanted it.

What other problems? Jak panted in your ear. He was wild, out of control, he tried to mount you and get inside you but the gear lever was in the way and the space too confined.

Lynxes in the kloofs, you said. You bit him in the neck.

More?

Bearded vultures. They peck out the eyes of the newborn lambs.

You took your breasts out of your bra and pressed his head against them. You immersed him in them. He had to surface for breath. Something about his neck and head seen from above looked like that of a little boy. His mouth, the irresistible mouth of Jak, now desperate and trembling, endeared him to you. His voice was hoarse.

I will do everything, he said. Plough and sow and shear and milk, I promise.

And help me make