# The Little Karoo/Chapter 8

​VIII: The Sisters
MARTA was the eldest of my father's children, and she was sixteen years old when our mother died and our father lost the last of his water-cases to old Jan Redlinghuis of Bitterwater. It was the water-cases that killed my mother. Many, many times she had cried to my father to give in to old Jan Redlinghuis whose water-rights had been fixed by law long before my father built his water-furrow from the Ghamka river. But my father could not rest. If he could but get a fair share of the river-water for his furrow, he would say, his farm of Zeekoegatt would be as rich as the farm of Bitterwater and we should then have a town-house in Platkops dorp and my mother should wear a black cashmere dress all the days of her life. My father could not see that my mother did not care about the black ​cashmere dress or the town-house in Platkops dorp. My mother was a very gentle woman with a disease of the heart, and all she cared about was to have peace in the house and her children happy around her. And for so long as my father was at law about his water-rights there could be no peace on all the farm of Zeekoegatt. With each new water-case came more bitterness and sorrow to us all. Even between my parents at last came bitterness and sorrow. And in bitterness and sorrow my mother died.
In his last water-case my father lost more money than ever before, and to save the farm he bonded some of the lands to old Jan Redlinghuis himself. My father was surely mad when he did this, but he did it. And from that day Jan Redlinghuis pressed him, pressed him, pressed him, till my father did not know which way to turn. And then, when my father's back was up against the wall and he thought he must sell the last of his lands to ​pay his bond, Jan Redlinghuis came to him and said:
"I will take your daughter, Marta Magdalena, instead."
Three days Jan Redlinghuis gave my father, and in three days, if Marta did not promise to marry him, the lands of Zeekoegatt must be sold. Marta told me this late that same night. She said to me:
"Sukey, my father has asked me to marry old Jan Redlinghuis. I am going to do it."
And she said again: "Sukey my darling, listen now! If I marry old Jan Redlinghuis he will let the water into my father's furrow, and the lands of Zeekoegatt will be saved. I am going to do it, and God will help me."
I cried to her: "Marta! Old Jan Redlinghuis is a sinful man, going at times a little mad in his head. God must help you before you marry him. Afterwards it will be too late."
And Marta said: "Sukey, if I do right, right will come of it, and it is right for me ​to save the lands for my father. Think now, Sukey my darling! There is not one of us. that is without sin in the world and old Jan Redlinghuis is not always mad. Who am I to judge Jan Redlinghuis? And can I then let my father be driven like a poor-white to Platkops dorp?" And she drew me down on to the pillow beside her, and took me into her arms, and I cried there until far into the night.
The next day I went alone across the river to old Jan Redlinghuis's farm. No one knew that I went, or what it was in my heart to do. When I came to the house Jan Redlinghuis was out on the stoep smoking his pipe.
I said to him: “Jan Redlinghuis, I have come to offer myself."
Jan Redlinghuis took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at me. I said again: "I have come to ask you to marry me instead of my sister Marta."
Old Jan Redlinghuis said to me: "And why ​have you come to do this thing, Sukey de Jager?"
I told him: "Because it is said that you are a sinful man, Jan Redlinghuis, going at times a little mad in your head, and my sister Marta is too good for you."
For a little while old Jan Redlinghuis looked at me, sitting there with his pipe in his hand, thinking the Lord knows what. And presently he said:
"All the same, Sukey de Jager, it is your sister Marta that I will marry and no one else. If not, I will take the lands of Zeekoegatt as is my right, and I will make your father bankrupt. Do now as you like about it."
And he put his pipe in his mouth, and not one other word would he say.
I went back to my father's house with my heart heavy like lead. And all that night I cried to God: "Do now what you will with me, but save our Marta." Yes, I tried to make a bargain with the Lord so that Marta ​might be saved. And I said also: "If He does not save our Marta I will know that there is no God."
In three weeks Marta married old Jan Redlinghuis and went to live with him across the river. On Marta's wedding day I put my father's Bible before him and said:
“Pa, pray if you like, but I shall not pray with you. There is no God or surely He would have saved our Marta. But if there is a God as surely will He burn our souls in hell for selling Marta to old Jan Redlinghuis."
From that time I could do what I would with my father, and my heart was bitter to all the world but my sister Marta. When my father said to me:
"Is it not wonderful, Sukey, what we have done with the water that old Jan Redlinghuis lets pass to my furrow?”
I answered him: "What is now wonderful? It is blood that we lead on our lands to water them. Did not my mother die for it? And ​was it not for this that we sold my sister Marta to old Jan Redlinghuis?"
Yes, I said that. It was as if my heart must break to see my father water his lands while old Jan Redlinghuis held my sister Marta up to shame before all Platkops.
I went across the river to my sister Marta as often as I could, but not once after he married her did old Jan Redlinghuis let Marta come back to my father's house.
"Look now, Sukey de Jager,” he would say to me, "your father has sold me his daughter for his lands. Let him now look to his lands and leave me his daughter." And that was all he would say about it.
Marta had said that old Jan Redlinghuis was not always mad, but from the day that he married her his madness was to cry to all the world to look at the wife that Burgert de Jager had sold to him.
"Look," he would say, "how she sits in her new tent-cart—the wife that Burgert de Jager sold to me."
​And he would point to the Zeekoegatt lands and say: "See now, how green they are, the lands that Burgert de Jager sold me his daughter to save."
Yes, even before strangers would he say these things, stopping his cart in the road to say them, with Marta sitting by his side.
My father said to me: "Is it not wonderful, Sukey, to see how Marta rides through the country in her new tent-cart?"
I said to him: "What is now wonderful? It is to her grave that she rides in the new tent-cart, and presently you will see it."
And I said to him also: "It took you many years to kill my mother, but believe me it will not take as many months for old Jan Redlinghuis to kill my sister Marta.” Yes, God forgive me, but I said that to my father. All my pity was for my sister Marta, and I had none to give my father.
And all this time Marta spoke no word against old Jan Redlinghuis. She had no illness that one might name, but every day ​she grew a little weaker, and every day Jan Redlinghuis inspanned the new tent-cart and drove her round the country. This madness came at last so strong upon him that he must drive from sun-up to sun-down crying to all whom he met:
"Look now at the wife that Burgert de Jager sold to me!"
So it went, day after day, day after day, till at last there came a day when Marta was too weak to climb into the cart and they carried her from where she fell into the house. Jan Redlinghuis sent for me across the river.
When I came to the house old Jan Redlinghuis was standing on the stoep with his gun. He said to me: "See here, Sukey de Jager! Which of us now had the greatest sin—your father who sold me his daughter Marta, or I who bought her? Marta who let herself be sold, or you who offered yourself to save her?"
And he took up his gun and left the stoep and would not wait for an answer.
​Marta lay where they had put her on old Jan Redlinghuis's great wooden bed, and only twice did she speak. Once she said:
"He was not always mad, Sukey my darling, and who am I that I should judge him?"
And again she said: "See how it is, my darling! In a little while I shall be with our mother. So it is that God has helped me."
At sun-down Marta died, and when they ran to tell Jan Redlinghuis they could not find him. All that night they looked for him, and the next day also. We buried Marta in my mother's grave at Zeekoegatt . . . . And still they could not find Jan Redlinghuis. Six days they looked for him, and at last they found his body in the mountains. God knows what madness had driven old Jan Redlinghuis to the mountains when his wife lay dying, but there it was they found him, and at Bitterwater he was buried.
That night my father came to me and said: "It is true what you said to me, Sukey. It is ​blood that I have led on my lands to water them, and this night will I close the furrow that I built from the Ghamka river. God forgive me, I will do it."
It was in my heart to say to him: "The blood is already so deep in the lands that nothing we can do will now wash it out." But I did not say this. I do not know how it was, but there came before me the still, sad face of my sister Marta, and it was as if she herself answered for me.
"Do now as it seems right to you," I said to my father. "Who am I that I should judge you?"
THE END