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pale and rigid with anger, a knife in his hand – “Just lay a hand on me, white man, then you know what will happen to you.” Was it the same occasion, and who was he talking to? To Jakob, my memory tells me, but I do not know where that certainty comes from, only that I was a frightened onlooker in the corner of the kraal – the smell of the kraal dung I can remember, and the rough stones against my back, and my fear.
    Dulsie in the house and Gert somewhere in the yard with the boys, working or fooling around, or playing – that is how I remember my childhood years. Jacomyn came only later, with Sofie, and then they left together and everything changed; but that was later. Of the herdsmen, however, I remember nothing. The men were in the veld with the sheep and built themselves shelters there, the women came to do our washing and smear our floors, and sometimes I played with the children, so that they stand out best in my memory though I cannotremember any one individual; barefoot children with ulcerous legs, in a skimpy dress or short trousers made of dressed skins or an old kaross. Later Mother did not want them near the house any longer, but later I myself had no further need of their company, later, when everything had changed; I only know that they were always around somewhere, behind the pear orchard or beyond the kraal wall, so that one accepted their constant presence without taking any further notice of them. The men were sometimes thrashed for being drunk or losing sheep, they were given notice or came to say they wanted to leave, and sometimes they simply disappeared during the night with their bundles, and only the black mark of their fireplace still showed where their shelters had stood.
    In my childhood years we possessed only two farms, the one in the Roggeveld and our winter quarters in the Karoo, but an effort was already under way to extend our boundaries, and I know there was constant conflict with neighbours about disputed land ownership or beacons that had reputedly been moved, and one of my earliest memories is how Jan Baster was chased from his dwelling-place near the boundary of our land. I never learned the details of this either, but I can remember an elderly coloured man at our door, hat in hand, trembling and stammering with dismay at the injustice he had come to complain to Father about; I must have been young still, for I know I had become upset too without realising why. Father stood on the threshhold, silently, with Mother close behind him, and I remember her giving him a little nudge in the back; “Tell the Hotnot to go away!” she hissed. How well I remember it, Mother’s black dress and her words and that small, impatient gesture with which she urged him on. At some time or other it was discovered or decided that the land on which Jan Baster lived was part of our farm and he was told to leave,while, from his point of view, he maintained the land had belonged to him and his people for many years and his father had lived there at the fountain before him; and then Jakob and Gert rode over one evening, or they were sent, and they burned down the few small buildings at the fountain. Jakob and Gert were enemies, but in the isolation that was our shared lifestyle, none of us could afford to surrender to our feelings of animosity or affection: Jakob and Gert struggling together to bring the ox under the yoke or to pry the rock loose with the crowbar where they were stacking the kraal wall, their heads close together; Jakob and Gert riding over to Bastersfontein together to set fire to the dry thatch of the hartbeeshuisies.
    How did I know this? It was probably mentioned at the dinner-table or it was eagerly discussed in the kitchen. Yes, and one evening, much later, old Dulsie snarled at Gert: “Jan Baster’s curse on you, both you and Jakob!” and Gert’s face clouded with anger in the dim firelight. “Old woman, just say another word …” His voice trails off in my ears, his face