Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [44]
Jak would not hear of reinstating a sharing. He dreamed of a completely mechanised farm that would require only one or two pairs of hands.
There was never a contract, he said, your mother kept the people here for her own convenience, we are under no obligation. The fewer of them the better.
You were ashamed of the attitude. Where were the people to go? It was their land as well, after all, their place, and they also had to work and eat.
Why did you keep your mouth shut, Milla? What were you scared of? Why could you never think that there were other possibilities? And Jak, why did you tolerate his bluntness and his selfishness and his vanity? You were bemused at the time by the short stories you read in the magazines. The heroine who exclaims with flushed cheeks: Now I’ve had enough, now I’m leaving you! Otherwise not a single magazine would sell hereabouts, you thought. But you thought no further.
You tried to assess other wives’ husbands dispassionately and you couldn’t really see that you were in a worse position. Jak was still the most attractive and the most intelligent of the lot. Not one of the women you knew was ‘fulfilled’, as they said. You could see that in their faces. But they were unshakeably loyal. It was Basie this and Fanie that and Thys came first clap your hands. Especially those in your circle of friends. And yet everyone was always starved for company. Always somebody who wanted to listen. Not one of the women you knew of who didn’t get lonely on a hill-farm. Not that the exchange of commonplaces could keep you going.
For a few months at a time you could keep a reading group going, or a music-appreciation group, but the women sat taciturn in your sitting room. As if the music of Schubert and Brahms and Mahler embarrassed them. Bach was acceptable. Sounded sufficiently like church. The books that you lent them they returned unread to the half-moon table in the hall and for the rest spoke of patchwork and complained about their servants who stole soap.
What failed most miserably was the walking club for amateur botanists that you tried to get going. You didn’t know all that much yourself, but you’d inherited your father’s books on trees and fynbos and as child had learnt the first principles of plant identification at his knee. But after you’d invaded the foothills a few times with the little ladies, stumbling along in their Sunday-best shoes, and their dresses that snagged on everything, and the anxious out-of-breath countenances solely concerned about what they had to serve their husbands for supper, you gave it up. You were not like them, you thought, you’d been born to more adventurous ways.
But you lost the way the first seven years on Grootmoedersdrift, and the loneliness started getting you down.
Your mother was a last resort when you were too lonely.
Then take me to Barrydale, you said when Jak wanted to go away on his expeditions on public holidays or for long weekends after lambing time or sowing-time.
Not that you really wanted to be with her all that badly, because her you could never satisfy. She was even worse after Pa’s death. She set snares for you, to test you, you felt. The quarrels were even more intense than at home with Jak. Against your mother you had no defence.
That was the summer of ’53. Ma had problems with her workers on the farm. She made you feel you had to find a solution. You accepted the challenge, wanted for a change to show her one needn’t be a victim of circumstance, needn’t allow other people to become victims.
You’re making a bed for yourself, is what she said, when she heard what you wanted to do. You’re meddling with things you’ll never hear the end of.
You were standing in the pantry, 16 December 1953, you wanted to take food to the workers’ huts. You were standing with a cooked leg of lamb in your hand which you wanted to pack to take to the people.
What on God’s earth are you doing now? she inveighed. Are you trying to bribe them?