A large rock midstream was coming up ahead and my uncle pushed himself towards me with what strength I do not know, and he got hold of my waist, my small body, and pulled us both to the rock. And then, after clinging, clinging to the rock for some minutes, he pulled us to the side, I don’t know how he did it. We were out of the current. I watched the current, going without me. It went, went on, without me. Without us.

The river moved into the trees, the distant trees, and away, and I couldn’t see it any more after that. It went to the sea.

All rivers go to the sea.

I’VE SAID MANY TIMES I loved that river. I love it still, and I haven’t set eyes on it in forty-four years. A part of me would like to see it again before I die, but I think that I will not.

How can you love something that almost killed you? Perhaps that’s the question that haunts me, with everything. Because I love South Africa, yet I came out of there in shreds. You can love something that wounded you. It took me a long time to understand that.

HELENA SAID TO ME recently, tell me about the time you nearly died in the river, Mom, tell me that story again. Oh Helena, I said. Do you remember how you and Stephen used to make me tell that story again and again when you were small? I’m not telling it again, I’m just not, I said.

I wish I could see that river, Mom, Helena said.

Perhaps it’s changed now, I said. I don’t know.

Rivers don’t change, Helena said then.

BUT THERE WAS the group of paintings, the oils that came after a visit one weekend to Villiers. The paintings carried in them, unmistakably, that river. Abstracts, but they held the largeness, the brownness, of that river. Its power. That undercurrent that could take everything along with it, in its wake. My paintings, that group, had that.

I set up three of them, I think there were four or five, I’d had to dig them out. They had been stacked against each other, against the wall. I set them up, one at a time, on my easel, then I sat on my chair. They weren’t large, I’ve said that.

They were perfect for Howard, for his office. I’d had a look at his office again, I felt satisfaction in that. I could picture exactly where they would be. But only one of them. Only one.

The paintings were variations on a theme, often I felt I was repeating myself in my work, but I know, now, that artists do that, all artists do that. I worried about it then. I thought I might not have what it took to create new things, that I would keep repeating myself, and repeating. I would run out of material, new material. Sometimes this thought — close to fear — woke me at night.