Part 6 (1/2)

They have arrived at the dam. The dam used to be filled by a wind-pump, but during the boom years Michiel installed a diesel-driven pump and left the old wind-pump to rust, because that was what everyone was doing. Now that the oil price has gone through the roof, Michiel may have to think again. He may have to go back to G.o.d's wind after all.

'Do you remember,' she says, 'When we used to come here as children . . .'

'And catch tadpoles in a sieve,' he picks up the story, 'and take them back to the house in a bucket of water and the next morning they all would be dead and we could never figure out why.'

'And locusts. We caught locusts too.'

Having mentioned the locusts, she wishes she hadn't. For she has remembered the fate of the locusts, or of one of them. Out of the bottle in which they had trapped it John took the insect and, while she watched, pulled steadily at a long rear leg until it came off the body, dryly, without blood or whatever counts as blood among locusts. Then he released it and they watched. Each time it tried to launch itself into flight it toppled to one side, its wings scrabbling in the dust, the remaining rear leg jerking ineffectually. Kill it! Kill it! she screamed at him. But he did not kill it, just walked away, looking disgusted. she screamed at him. But he did not kill it, just walked away, looking disgusted.

'Do you remember,' she says, 'how once you pulled the leg off a locust and left me to kill it? I was so cross with you.'

'I remember it every day of my life,' he says. 'Every day I ask the poor thing's forgiveness. I was just a child, I say to it, just an ignorant child who did not know better. Kaggen Kaggen, I say, forgive me.'

'Kaggen?'

'Kaggen. The name of mantis, the mantis G.o.d. But the locust will understand. In the afterworld there are no language problems. It's like Eden all over again.'

The mantis G.o.d. He has lost her.

A night wind moans through the vanes of the dead wind-pump. She s.h.i.+vers. 'We must go back,' she says.

'In a minute. Have you read the book by Eugene Marais about the year he spent observing a baboon troop? He writes that at nightfall, when the troop stopped foraging and watched the sun go down, he could detect in the eyes of the older baboons the stirrings of melancholy, the birth of a first awareness of their own mortality.'

'Is that what the sunset makes you think of mortality?'

'No. But I can't help remembering the first conversation you and I had, the first meaningful conversation. We must have been six years old. What the actual words were I don't recall, but I know I was unburdening my heart to you, telling you everything about myself, all my hopes and longings. And all the time I was thinking, So this is what it means to be in love! So this is what it means to be in love! Because let me confess it I was in love with you. And ever since that day, being in love with a woman has meant being free to say everything on my heart.' Because let me confess it I was in love with you. And ever since that day, being in love with a woman has meant being free to say everything on my heart.'

'Everything on your heart . . . What has that to do with Eugene Marais?'

'Simply that I understand what the old male baboon was thinking as he watched the sun go down, the troop leader, the one Marais was closest to. Never again Never again, he was thinking: Just one Just one life and then never again life and then never again. Never, never, never. Never, never, never. That is what the Karoo does to me too. It fills me with melancholy. It spoils me for life.' That is what the Karoo does to me too. It fills me with melancholy. It spoils me for life.'

She still does not see what baboons have to do with the Karoo or their childhood years, but she is not going to let on.

'This place wrenches my heart,' he says. 'It wrenched my heart when I was a child, and I have never been right since.'

His heart is wrenched. She had no inkling of that. It used to be, she thinks to herself, that she knew without being told what was going on in other people's hearts. Her own special talent: meegevoel, meegevoel, feeling-with. But not any more, not any more! She grew up; and as she grew up she grew stiff, like a woman who never gets asked to dance, who spends her Sat.u.r.day evenings waiting in vain on a bench in the church hall, who by the time some man remembers his manners and offers his hand has lost all pleasure, wants only to go home. What a shock! What a revelation! This cousin of hers carries within him memories of how he loved her! Has carried them all these years! feeling-with. But not any more, not any more! She grew up; and as she grew up she grew stiff, like a woman who never gets asked to dance, who spends her Sat.u.r.day evenings waiting in vain on a bench in the church hall, who by the time some man remembers his manners and offers his hand has lost all pleasure, wants only to go home. What a shock! What a revelation! This cousin of hers carries within him memories of how he loved her! Has carried them all these years!

[Groans.] Did I really say all that?

[Laughs.] You did.

How indiscreet of me! [Laughs.] Never mind, go on.

'Don't reveal that to Carol,' he John, her cousin says. 'Don't tell her, with her satirical tongue, how I feel about the Karoo.

If you do, I'll never hear the end of it.'

'You and the baboons,' she says. 'Carol has a heart too, believe it or not. But no, I won't tell her your secret. It's getting chilly. Can we go back?'

They circle past the farm-workers' quarters, keeping a decent distance. Through the dark the coals of a cooking-fire glow in fierce points of red.

'How long will you be staying?' she asks. 'Will you still be here for New Year's Day?' Nuwejaar Nuwejaar: for the volk, volk, the people, a red letter day, quite overshadowing Christmas. the people, a red letter day, quite overshadowing Christmas.

'No, I can't stay so long. I have things to attend to in Cape Town.'

'Then can't you leave your father behind and come back later to fetch him? Give him time to relax and build up his strength. He doesn't look well.'

'He won't stay behind. My father has a restless nature. Wherever he is, he wants to be somewhere else. The older he grows, the worse it gets. It's like an itch. He can't keep still. Besides, he has his job to get back to. He takes his job very seriously.'

The farmhouse is quiet. They slip in through the back door. 'Good night,' she says, 'sleep tight.'

In her room she hurries to get into bed. She would like to be asleep by the time her sister and brother-in-law come indoors, or at least to be able to pretend she is asleep. She is not keen to be interrogated on what pa.s.sed during her ramble with John. Given half a chance, Carol will prise the story out of her. I was in love with you when I was six; you set the pattern of my love for other women. I was in love with you when I was six; you set the pattern of my love for other women. What a thing to say! Indeed, what a compliment! But what of herself? What was going on in her six-year-old heart when all that premature pa.s.sion was going on in his? She agreed to marry him, certainly, but did she agree they were in love? If so, she has no recollection of it. And what of now what does she feel for him now? His declaration has certainly made her heart glow. What an odd character, this cousin of hers! His oddness does not come from the Coetzee side, she is sure of that, she is after all half Coetzee herself, so it must come from his mother's, from the Meyers or whatever the name was, the Meyers from the Eastern Cape. Meyer or Meier or Meiring. What a thing to say! Indeed, what a compliment! But what of herself? What was going on in her six-year-old heart when all that premature pa.s.sion was going on in his? She agreed to marry him, certainly, but did she agree they were in love? If so, she has no recollection of it. And what of now what does she feel for him now? His declaration has certainly made her heart glow. What an odd character, this cousin of hers! His oddness does not come from the Coetzee side, she is sure of that, she is after all half Coetzee herself, so it must come from his mother's, from the Meyers or whatever the name was, the Meyers from the Eastern Cape. Meyer or Meier or Meiring.

Then she is asleep.

'He is stuck up,' says Carol. 'He thinks too much of himself. He can't bear to lower himself to talk to ordinary people. When he isn't messing around with his car he is sitting in a corner with a book. And why doesn't he get a haircut? Every time I lay eyes on him I have an urge to tie him down and slap a pudding-bowl over his head and snip off those hideous greasy locks of his.'

'His hair isn't greasy,' she protests, 'it's just too long. I think he washes it with hand-soap. That's why it is all over the place. And he is shy, not stuck up. That's why he keeps to himself. Give him a chance, he's an interesting person.'

'He is flirting with you. Anyone can see it. And you are flirting back. You, his cousin! You should be ashamed of yourself. Why isn't he married? Is he h.o.m.os.e.xual, do you think? Is he a moffie moffie?'

She never knows whether Carol means what she says or is simply out to provoke her. Even here on the farm Carol goes about in modish white slacks and low-cut blouses, high-heeled sandals, heavy bracelets. She buys her clothes in Frankfurt, she says, on business trips with her husband. She certainly makes the rest of them look very dowdy, very staid, very country-cousin. She and Klaus live in Sandton in a twelve-room mansion owned by Anglo-American, for which they pay no rent, with stables and polo-ponies and a groom, though neither of them knows how to ride. They have no children yet; they will have children, Carol informs her, when they are properly settled. Properly settled means settled in America.

In the Sandton set in which she and Klaus move, she confides, quite advanced things go on. She does not spell out what these advanced things may be, and she, Margot, does not want to ask, but they seem to have to do with s.e.x.

I won't let you write that. You can't write that about Carol.

It's what you told me.

Yes, but you can't write down every word I say and broadcast it to the world. I never agreed to that. Carol will never speak to me again.

All right, I'll cut it out or tone it down, I promise. Just hear me to the end. Can I go on?

Go on.

Carol has broken completely from her roots. She bears no resemblance to the plattelandse meisie, plattelandse meisie, the country girl, she once used to be. She looks, if anything, German, with her bronzed skin and coiffeured blonde hair and emphatic eyeliner. Stately, big-busted, and barely thirty. Frau Dr Muller. If Frau Dr Muller decided to flirt in the Sandton manner with cousin John, how long would it be before cousin John succ.u.mbed? Love means being able to open your heart to the beloved, says John. What would Carol say to that? About love Carol could teach her cousin a thing or two, she is sure at least about love in its advanced version. the country girl, she once used to be. She looks, if anything, German, with her bronzed skin and coiffeured blonde hair and emphatic eyeliner. Stately, big-busted, and barely thirty. Frau Dr Muller. If Frau Dr Muller decided to flirt in the Sandton manner with cousin John, how long would it be before cousin John succ.u.mbed? Love means being able to open your heart to the beloved, says John. What would Carol say to that? About love Carol could teach her cousin a thing or two, she is sure at least about love in its advanced version.

John is not a moffie moffie: she knows enough about men to know that. But there is something cool or cold about him, something that if not neuter is at least neutral, as a young child is neutral in matters of s.e.x. There must have been women in his life, if not in South Africa then in America, though he has said not a word about them. Did his American women get to see his heart? If he makes a practice of it, of opening his heart, then he is unusual: men, in her experience, find nothing harder.

She herself has been married for ten years. Ten years ago she said goodbye to Carnarvon, where she had a job as a secretary in a lawyer's office, and moved to her bridegroom's farm east of Middelpos in the Roggeveld where, if she is lucky, if G.o.d smiles on her, she will live out the rest of her days.

The farm is home to the two of them, home and Heim Heim, but she cannot be at home as much as she wishes. There is no money in sheep-farming any more, not in the barren, drought-ridden Roggeveld. To help make ends meet she has had to go back to work, as a bookkeeper this time, at the one hotel in Calvinia. Four nights of the week, Monday through Thursday, she spends at the hotel; on Fridays her husband drives in from the farm to fetch her, delivering her back in Calvinia at the crack of dawn the next Monday.

Despite this weekly separation it makes her heart ache, she hates her dreary hotel room, sometimes she cannot hold back her tears, but lays her head on her arms and sobs she and Lukas have what she would call a happy marriage. More than happy: fortunate, blessed. A good husband, a happy marriage, but no children. Not by design but by fate: her fate, her fault. Of the two sisters, one barren, the other not yet settled not yet settled.

A good husband but close with his feelings. Is a guarded heart an affliction of men in general or just of South African men? Are Germans Carol's husband, for instance any better? At this moment Klaus is seated on the stoep with the troop of Coetzee kinsfolk he has acquired by marriage, smoking a cheroot (he freely offers his cheroots around, but his rookgoed rookgoed is too strange, too foreign for the Coetzees), regaling them in his loud baby-Afrikaans, of which he is not in the slightest ashamed, with stories of the times he and Carol have gone skiing in Zermatt. Does Klaus, in the privacy of their Sandton home, now and then open up his heart to Carol in his slick, easy, confident European manner? She doubts it. She doubts that Klaus has much of a heart to show. She has seen little evidence of one. Whereas of the Coetzees it can at least be said that they have hearts, to a man and to a woman. Too much heart, in fact, sometimes, some of them. is too strange, too foreign for the Coetzees), regaling them in his loud baby-Afrikaans, of which he is not in the slightest ashamed, with stories of the times he and Carol have gone skiing in Zermatt. Does Klaus, in the privacy of their Sandton home, now and then open up his heart to Carol in his slick, easy, confident European manner? She doubts it. She doubts that Klaus has much of a heart to show. She has seen little evidence of one. Whereas of the Coetzees it can at least be said that they have hearts, to a man and to a woman. Too much heart, in fact, sometimes, some of them.

'No, he's not a moffie moffie,' she says. 'Talk to him and you will see for yourself.'

'WOULD YOU LIKE to go for a drive this afternoon?' John offers. to go for a drive this afternoon?' John offers.