This Life

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THE NIGHT-LIGHT FLICKERS and goes out; I lie awake in the dark, listening to the regular breathing of the girl asleep on the cot at the foot of my bed. It does not matter, nothing matters now, for to wait is all that remains, and light or darkness no longer matters. I know this room where I slept as a child, this old house on the ridge with Maans’s new house some distance below, the kraals, the dams, and the low hills of the flat, faded land. I do not even have to close my eyes: wide-eyed in the dark I see the house where I was born, the farm where I grew up and, if I were to get up, I would still be able to find my way blindly over the dung floor of the bedroom and Stienie’s new wooden floor in the voorhuis. I would feel my way to the bolt on the front door, without hesitation I would pull open the heavy old door, careful not to let the hinges creak, and step out into the yard. There is no moon, but I do not need moonlight to recognise the farm of my youth or to find the footpath. I feel no pain as I step barefoot over the stones, past the outbuildings and the kraal, and over the ridge to the graveyard, to stand there, my hand resting on the stacked stones of the wall. And then? What then? I am no longer certain what I have come to look for here. The silver glow of the night becomes shrouded, the greyish landscape grows dim before my eyes, and I no longer know where I am.

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