It is always asking a question,
and it never gets the answer. I can hear it in the day and in the night;
the white foam breakers are saying that which I think. I walk alone with
them when there is no one to see me, and I sing with them. I lie down on
the sand and watch them with my eyes half shut. The sky is better, but it
is so high above our heads. I love the sea. Sometimes we must look down
too. After five days I went back to Grahamstown.
"I had glorious books, and in the night I could sit in my little room and
read them; but I was lonely. Books are not the same things when you are
living among people. I cannot tell why, but they are dead. On the farm
they would have been living beings to me; but here, where there were so
many people about me, I wanted some one to belong to me. I was lonely. I
wanted something that was flesh and blood. Once on this farm there came a
stranger; I did not ask his name, but he sat among the karoo and talked
with me. Now, wherever I have travelled I have looked for him--in hotels,
in streets, in passenger wagons as they rushed in, through the open windows
of houses I have looked for him, but I have not found him--never heard a
voice like his. One day I went to the Botanic Gardens. It was a half-
holiday, and the band was to play. I stood in the long raised avenue and
looked down.
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