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You can still hear your voice.

We’d rather lose a calf than a cow. But a child, a human child, was something else, a human child comes first.

Ashen, Agaat was. She swayed from side to side in her seat as you took the first bends of the pass. You couldn’t go too fast, the road wasn’t tarred yet in those days.

The next contractions were too quick. You pulled off in a small parking area on the left side of the road. You tilted the seat as far back as possible so that you could half lie, but it didn’t help. The pain was in you like a lip of lava thrusting, thrusting slowly into a street.

The first thing I’ll teach you if we get through this is how to drive, you groaned. Do you hear me? You’ll learn to drive even if it’s the only ride you ever get.

You took off your watch.

Here, put this on your arm. Time how long it goes on for.

The contractions lasted for seven minutes. When they abated, Agaat filled the lid of the flask with tea. She held the flask in her strong hand to pour. Her weak hand trembled as she tried to pass the lid to you clasped in the puny little fingertips.

God in heaven, you thought, just grant that we get across the pass in time, because there really are not enough hands here. For the first time you realised it. You closed your eyes, tried to get in the sweet tea in little gulps.

Is it very sore? you heard a whisper to one side of you, as soft as if somebody was twirling the tip of a feather in your inner ear.

You couldn’t stop the tears.

Never mind, you heard, or thought you heard, deep in you, a sound that stirred lightly in your navel.

There is nothing, the voice said, nothing to about cry.

There is nothing.

The sound of feathers being settled in place before nightfall.

Never mind.

The sound of a rivulet trickling from a slope after it’s rained high up in the rock faces.

Nothing to cry about. Agaat’s first grammar.

You drew courage from that. You started the car and looked at Agaat. Her face was neutral, you must have imagined things.

It was almost twelve o’clock. Fortunately the road was drying out. You drove hard. The rock faces loomed up, closer all the time, rougher, greyer, swallowing you. Deeper and deeper, it felt, you were sinking into the body of the mountain, deeper into the black shadows, with every corner that you took.

What does the river look like? you asked Agaat to divert her attention.

Full, she said.

What else?

Shiny.

Is it far down?

Far. And near.

She whispered. There was a white ring around her mouth.

Suddenly it was lukewarm between your legs. Inside you something dropped and heaved and pushed. It was your time. It wasn’t going to take nine hours, Ma was wrong. It would be Agaat’s baby, you knew, but you didn’t say it out loud.

You were in the middle of the pass. The lay-bys were on your right. After fifteen minutes you had to pull in at the first one that appeared. This time the pains lasted longer. You breathed deeply. One more shift, you thought, another fifteen minute’s driving, perhaps we’ll make it after all. Suddenly you were angry with your mother. Furious that you’d listened to her hard voice and her harsh advice. You could have simply stayed at home. Saar was there, you could have summoned Beatrice. The one stank of body odour and the other of sanctity, but at least they had experience. You could have had the doctor called from Swellendam. There were hundreds of things that you could have thought of yourself instead of asking her. As if she had a monopoly on wisdom, she had after all only had you, the wisdom of a single child. Your resentful thoughts inclined you to brutality towards Agaat. You couldn’t stop yourself. Now you sounded just like your mother.

Yes, Agaat, you said, that’s the way of the world, you see what life’s like. So it has been written. Come, you know your Bible, don’t you. What does it say in Genesis about having children?

Agaat got out two words.

In sorrow, she said.

From the corner of your eye you saw her tighten her mouth, look at the watch. Seven