Free Philida by André Brink Page A

man or a woman, then it suddenly become a tuft of grass or an anthill. Or a Mountain Woman change into a stone or a rock, nothing ever just stay the same, they all keep changing their shape and they keep moving like grass or bushes in the wind, even if there is no wind.
    Very close to me is the black water of the Eye where that long-haired woman live. Here you dare not stop to drink, or she will come out and drag you into the depths. Because it is a black hole without end, a fountain that bubble up from the deepest depth of the earth. The water is smooth and clean, you can see right through it all the way to the bottom, even if there is no bottom, because down there it keep all the midnight darkness that will always remain a secret. And it is always ready to reflect the heavens, the moon and the stars and the clouds and the sun. The water been there for ever, the water of today and yesterday and many years before, and yet the water will never see my face again. I am there, right inside it, and yet, if I look again, it is as if I never been here. It is as if even now, at this moment, as I sit here on my knees and look at myself down there, even
now
I am not here, as if I never been here at all and never will be here again. Because the water stay still right where it is, pitch black and filled with the lightest light, yet in a strange way it keep moving, as if something keep stirring it, without ever stopping, ever since the first sun looked down into it until the last moon will rise over it and still will not rise.
    And I know that everything around me here, the fountain with its black water filled with secrets, and the shadows that stir and come and go when I’m not looking, and the overhang with the little prickmen, and the moon and the stars, and tomorrow’s sun and yesterday’s wind, and the tokoloshes and the water maidens, everything will go with me from here, all the way to Zandvliet, to look after me.
    Back at the farm down there I shall first go to the Dwars River and make a little hollow for Willempie on the bank, and then walk into the cool water to wash the hot day from me. Washing and washing and scrubbing, so that I’ll be ready to start again. Taking my time, time to think carefully about everything, about what Grootbaas Lindenberg said, and about Frans, about myself, all of it. I know that if we ever have time to talk about it again, he will talk differently. I know he will. Because this is our child, that we made with so much love, like Lena who will be waiting for me with Ouma Nella. And like Mamie who would have waited if she was still with us. And of course like KleinFrans who would also have waited, but I do not speak about him.
    Then, once I have washed the long walk from me, I shall go to Ouma Nella’s room. Past the chicken run where that mad hen keep on cackling all day long without a single egg to show for it, and past the stupid donkeys, past the old black sow. And when I get to Ouma Nella’s room, my Kleinkat will come to me as she always come to greet me. Purring around my legs, over and over, then upside down with her small head resting on one of my feet, with her eyes closed, rubbing the back of her head along my toes, to say: See, you are mine and I am yours, now rub my tummy and around my ears. I shall squat down beside her and start caressing her. I shall press my face against her and sniff in the smell of warm grass and buchu on her small feet. Then I will know I am really home. When the day is ready to be cast off like a good piece of knitting and the night cup its hand over the longhouse, I can crawl in under the
bulsak
with Ouma Nella, cuddling up next to her, her body warm as a loaf of bread, I can slide and sink into the deepest of all sleeps. Except that today I know for the first time ever that even this place, where I live, is no longer mine as I always thought. I no longer belong here. I belong nowhere. What happen to me will always be what others want to happen. I am a piece of