us company, and sat in the voorhuis: the subdued voices, the tales of sickness and sudden death, the bowls of coffee that were served all day long, and the wailing of the sickly child, the white knuckles of Sofie’s hand – but no, why does that image keep returning? It does not belong here where it is constantly intruding. The neighbours helped search for him and found nothing and at lastthey had to give up and return to their own tasks, and we remained behind in the silent house, not knowing, or even able to guess what had happened.
For the first few days Father still rode out with them, but now he sent Pieter and Gert back to Kalantskloof to shout and fire their rifles and to explore the kloof, as if he believed it was still possible to find something, and the herdsmen were also instructed to let the sheep graze in the vicinity of Kalantskloof and the adjacent kloofs, so that they could look there for tracks or signs. And so it was a Bushman herdsman who arrived at the house one morning to report that he had been trying to reach a sheep that had slid down into a cleft in the rockface, and among the shrubs and branches blown together there, he had seen the crumpled dark fabric of a man’s jacket. Then Father had the wagon inspanned and rode out to the kloof with Pieter and Gert, and he waited on the wagon – for he was unable to clamber down those cliffs – while Pieter and Gert went to search in the crevice and brought Jakob back. It must have been quite a while after his disappearance, for the body had begun to decompose, but there was no doubt it was he: he had probably lost his footing on the slope, slid down the smooth rockface where he could find no handhold, and been trapped in the narrow cleft where the searchers could not see him in the dark among the shrubs and grass collected there; during his fall his head had struck a rock, so that his skull was shattered and his face hardly recognisable, and his rifle, which the herdsman also found in the crevice later, had snapped and was irreparably damaged, as if he had gripped it more firmly as he fell. They wrapped the body in an oxhide and laid it behind the shed, for they could not bring it inside; it was nearly dark when they arrived here, and Mother and Dulsie took basins of water and clean cloths and tallow candles and went to the shed to wash him and lay him out, but Sofie did not go. How do Iknow all this; how do I know it was an oxhide in which they wrapped him? But that is how it was.
The field-cornet came over to examine the body, and then Jakob was buried in the graveyard beyond the ridge, beyond the pear trees. All the neighbours came over again for the funeral – there must have been twenty or thirty people, including the children – and I remember their subdued conversations and how they fell silent when they noticed a member of the family. After the ceremony at the graveside I served bowls of coffee in the voorhuis and, because I was only a child, they did not take much notice of me. It cannot be right for a wife to stand at her husband’s graveside with dry eyes, they remarked deprecatingly, and spoke of Jakob’s fall and what he could have been doing in the kloof where his body was found, so far from the place where he had last been seen. That was when I discovered for the first time how much you could see and hear if you remained silent and withdrew, if you watched and listened and did not allow a single word or gesture to escape you; it was then, as I moved unnoticed among the funeral-goers with the coffee, that, without realising it, I learned how to live the rest of my life. But the carts and wagons were inspanned again and they left, and on Jakob’s grave stones were stacked, with upright stones at the head and foot. We heard nothing more from the field-cornet. I can still picture Sofie among the guests on the day of the funeral, Sofie in the black satin dress in which she was married; but in all that time I did not see her with anything
For the first few days Father still rode out with them, but now he sent Pieter and Gert back to Kalantskloof to shout and fire their rifles and to explore the kloof, as if he believed it was still possible to find something, and the herdsmen were also instructed to let the sheep graze in the vicinity of Kalantskloof and the adjacent kloofs, so that they could look there for tracks or signs. And so it was a Bushman herdsman who arrived at the house one morning to report that he had been trying to reach a sheep that had slid down into a cleft in the rockface, and among the shrubs and branches blown together there, he had seen the crumpled dark fabric of a man’s jacket. Then Father had the wagon inspanned and rode out to the kloof with Pieter and Gert, and he waited on the wagon – for he was unable to clamber down those cliffs – while Pieter and Gert went to search in the crevice and brought Jakob back. It must have been quite a while after his disappearance, for the body had begun to decompose, but there was no doubt it was he: he had probably lost his footing on the slope, slid down the smooth rockface where he could find no handhold, and been trapped in the narrow cleft where the searchers could not see him in the dark among the shrubs and grass collected there; during his fall his head had struck a rock, so that his skull was shattered and his face hardly recognisable, and his rifle, which the herdsman also found in the crevice later, had snapped and was irreparably damaged, as if he had gripped it more firmly as he fell. They wrapped the body in an oxhide and laid it behind the shed, for they could not bring it inside; it was nearly dark when they arrived here, and Mother and Dulsie took basins of water and clean cloths and tallow candles and went to the shed to wash him and lay him out, but Sofie did not go. How do Iknow all this; how do I know it was an oxhide in which they wrapped him? But that is how it was.
The field-cornet came over to examine the body, and then Jakob was buried in the graveyard beyond the ridge, beyond the pear trees. All the neighbours came over again for the funeral – there must have been twenty or thirty people, including the children – and I remember their subdued conversations and how they fell silent when they noticed a member of the family. After the ceremony at the graveside I served bowls of coffee in the voorhuis and, because I was only a child, they did not take much notice of me. It cannot be right for a wife to stand at her husband’s graveside with dry eyes, they remarked deprecatingly, and spoke of Jakob’s fall and what he could have been doing in the kloof where his body was found, so far from the place where he had last been seen. That was when I discovered for the first time how much you could see and hear if you remained silent and withdrew, if you watched and listened and did not allow a single word or gesture to escape you; it was then, as I moved unnoticed among the funeral-goers with the coffee, that, without realising it, I learned how to live the rest of my life. But the carts and wagons were inspanned again and they left, and on Jakob’s grave stones were stacked, with upright stones at the head and foot. We heard nothing more from the field-cornet. I can still picture Sofie among the guests on the day of the funeral, Sofie in the black satin dress in which she was married; but in all that time I did not see her with anything
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