Tales from the Old Karoo

by Guy Butler

  Then, in the distance, he heard the hounds. Not one, but a whole pack. Wildly, he hoped they were domestic dogs, not wild hunting dogs, not, please God, not fox hounds. They were coming nearer, no doubt about it, closing in.

  It was now the anonymous hour, between night and day: not quite dark, not quite light, when nothing seems real.

  Where could he hide? The dogs would get his scent. Pull him down. Groin and throat. Safest to stay in cart. He peered with wide longing eyes at the row of koppies on his right. They were familiar enough, but reminded him of another ridge, one of the first he’d seen in Africa. From the nearest there was a sudden flash, followed by another, and then another – then three loud rifle cracks. The Boer ambush! Again!

  He thrashed the horses, but to no effect. Across the veld to the left came the dogs and the yelling beaters, and down from the koppies came the gunmen, closing in on him.

  And then he found himself surrounded by his brother-in-law’s jackal hunt. Gysbert was very angry. What the hell did he mean by taking up that position? Did he want to collect a bullet through his head? Would he be so good as to get himself and his cart out of the way.

  ‘Can’t. Bewitched. Look!’ croaked Tony, whipping the horses.

  Exclamations of surprise followed. Inspection in the half-light showed that the cart was on one side of the closed gate, the pole through it, and the horses spanned in on the other side. This made Gysbert angrier than ever.

  ‘What drunken game do you think you are playing now?’

  Antony climbed off the cart. He could find no words to put into an explanatory telegram, except, blushing, ‘Asleep at the time.’

  Gysbert seized him by the lapels, and shook him. ‘Asleep? Sitting upright in a Cape cart?’

  The men stared at each other. Then Captain Antony Colquhoun raised both hands as if he were surrendering, up, up. Gysbert let go his lapels. The raised arms sank, the Captain slowly straightened himself up, and stretched his neck out, like a defeated dog exposing his jugular to his foes. But there was no defeat in the eyes which he turned from Gysbert to all the circle of the hunt in turn: anguish, yes, acknowledgement, yes, recognition, yes. The phrases of the telegram of surrender came slowly.

  ‘Blind drunk. On the floor. Nuisance for years. Apologies.’

  These extraordinarily embarrassing and moving moments were mercifully shortened for all by the approaching sound of a cantering horse, from the direction of Bosky Dell. It was Klaas. He thanked God to see his master safe. He begged to be forgiven for having run away. It had been the worst thing in his life. The night had been unusual for the number of owls hooting. Just when he had opened the gate, a jackal yelped behind him, it seemed, right between his shoulders. At which point his legs had just taken over, and wouldn’t stop their stampede until he reached home.

  All the tensions and paradoxical feelings aroused by the Captain’s surrender seemed to find release in laughter at Klaas’s account. As for the cart being on one side of the closed gate and the horses on the other, that was a miracle.

  The early dawn wind stirred in their hair and shirt sleeves. They started getting the horses and cart free of the gate. It took a very long time, because everyone was happily trying to explain how it happened. There were, after all, no precedents for angels or devils inspanning or outspanning carts.

  But there was always a first time, wasn’t there? And were not all things possible with God?

  The beneficiary of the mysterious event was not listening. He had mounted his horse, and was riding home alone at a gentle pace, blushing, his face wet with tears of shame and joy.

  Years later, as a sober man with three sons, he’d admit there was something suspicious about the circumstances of his cure. Maybe it was a manufactured miracle, but a miracle nevertheless. Gysbert said maybe. He was not given to metaphysical speculations.

  5

  Lambs, Aasvogels, Zebras and the Day of Judgement

  You know that mountain with the two domes of ironstone on top? Aasvogelskop; not far from Speelmanskop. Well, in 1857 at the foot of it, young P.J. Bezuidenhout and P.Z. his brother had a hartbeeshuisie. They were supposed to be looking after their father’s sheep, but they spent most of their time hunting. This meant that the aasvogels did just what they liked with the poor lambing ewes. The birds were particularly greedy, because they had to feed their hungry chicks in their nests on the ironstone crags of Aasvogelskop.

  When P.J. Bezuidenhout senior came out to inspect and count the spring lambs he found it necessary to reprimand his sons more severely than usual.

  Old PJ. Bezuidenhout senior was a devout man who never spared the sjambok lest he should spoil his two children. When he’d satisfied himself that he had not fallen into the trap of spoiling them, he put the sjambok aside, and talked to them gently about the end of the world, the day of judgement, and all the strange portents that would announce those events: and that they must now pull themselves together, so that when the trumpets of doomsday sounded, and the seals were broken and the books were opened, they could face their Maker with a clear conscience, particularly on this matter of protecting their father’s ewes from the aasvogels. He then rode back to Cradock, to which place he had retired to be closer to the church, and the morning market.

  Well, P.J. junior and P.Z. made a plan. First they fitted themselves out with gauntlets made of rhino skin so thick that not even an aasvogel’s beak could penetrate them. Then they shot two zebras, skinned them, and left the carcasses to the aasvogels. When the aasvogels had picked them clean, they sewed the skeletons into their skins again, except for a hole for themselves to crawl into.

  Well, sure enough, the old aasvogels spotted these zebras lying still near the water hole, and came down to inspect. As they ripped the hide open, they were caught by their naked necks. In no time the brothers tied their beaks up, and put a thong round their wings.

  The next step was to get the pith of a big dead aloe, the kokerboom: two pieces about four inches thick and two feet long, and tinder-dry. These they attached with three-foot thongs to the birds’ legs. When the right moment came, they would set them alight. Kokerboom fibre does not flame, it smoulders like an enormous cigarette.

  The plan was very clever. The birds, when released, would of course fly straight up to Aasvogelskop, and the smouldering pith would set the nests alight and burn the whole colony of wicked birds to ashes, just what they deserved. They decided to release the birds at nightfall, so that the fire would show up better. To give some idea of how godless P.J. junior and P.Z. were, they worked all Sunday catching those birds.

  Their plan did not work out as expected. These aasvogels didn’t come from Aasvogelskop at all, but from Babylonstoren in the Agtersneeuberg. They flew right over Cradock just as the people were going into church, P.J. Bezuidenhout senior along with the rest.

  The sight of two comets moving across the sky had a strange effect on Cradock. Everyone was riveted to the ground and the people already in the church came pouring out in order not to miss the start of the Apocalypse.

  Strange things began to happen. On P.J. senior’s right the lawyer turned to one of his clients and asked to be forgiven for having taken more than his due in fees; on his left the dominee’s daughter assured her mother that she would pray all night for her and for her father because now all their secret hypocrisy was going to be shouted from the rooftops of Cradock.

  P.J. senior was smitten in his conscience. The market had preoccupied him so much during the past few days that he’d forgotten all about P.J. junior and P.Z. Perhaps they’d not seen the comets; perhaps they’d turned in early and were thus at a disadvantage, not having had proper warning of the wrath to come.

  P.J. junior and P.Z. had taken their setback philosophically. Maybe they’d be lucky and catch aasvogels with the right address the next day. Meanwhile it was important to save their decoy zebras from the hyenas. They found the easiest way to carry them was to get inside them and walk back to the hartbeeshuisie. This caused a sensati
on among the rest of the animal kingdom. Responsible baboon patriarchs harried their families to safety deep into the Tarkastad district. A water tortoise buried himself in the mud and wished he were a barbel. Hundreds of dassies lined the route, their inquisitive natures quite overcoming their sense of danger. A katlagter died of laughter.

  Safely back at the hartbeeshuisie P.J. junior and P.Z. decided to make an early start the next morning.

  P.J. senior was up with the morning star. If he had any doubts about the proximity of the day of wrath, these were dispelled by the sight of two zebras walking upright, like chessmen, through the melk- and gannabos. He put the spurs into his horse and made a dash for the hartbeeshuisie. It was empty. He was plunged into even deeper remorse. Here was clear evidence that P.J. junior and P.Z. were not lay-abouts or lie-abeds. The dutiful lads had risen before dawn to guard their father’s ewes from the aasvogels – and were even now somewhere in the veld quite unaware that two of the Horses of the Apocalypse were in the neighbourhood. P.J. senior decided to stay where he was, reciting all the psalms and hymns he knew.

  It was a long, long day. Some time in the afternoon, exhausted with hunger and emotion, he fell asleep. When he awoke he went outside. There he collapsed on his knees in terror. The general conflagration had begun. All Aasvogelskop was burning.

  It was in this condition that P.J. junior and P.Z. found their father when they returned from their highly gratifying day. Pointing wildly, shouting incoherently, ordering them to fall on their knees, P.J. senior begged their forgiveness, which he hoped they would give because they also probably had things on their minds.

  It took P.J. junior and P.Z. the best part of an hour, and half a bottle of witblits, to explain how they had been the unwitting bringers-on of the day of wrath, which was merely the first Wednesday in October 1857.

  When he grasped this, old P.J. senior was sorry he’d left his sjambok behind. He had no option but to spare it on this occasion. Would they be spoilt by its non-application? He took another swig of brandy. No, perhaps not.

  By the time the moon came up, P.J. senior had his right arm over P.J. junior’s shoulders, and his left over the shoulders of P.Z. And he was saying, ‘We Bezuidenhouts aren’t bred under a turkey hen. It takes Bezuidenhouts to send two comets over Cradock and burn up Aasvogelskop.’

  6

  Groot-Piet’s Dream of Heaven

  Groot-Piet Castelyn was not given to secrecy, conspiracy, scandal stories, confidences or confessions. He told everybody everything, loud and clear, because, he said, he had nothing to hide from man or God. That was how he chose to be seen.

  Unlike his miserable runt of a first cousin, the Deacon Klein-Piet Castelyn, Groot-Piet was a big man, with a big voice, the owner of many big farms and without any overdraft, big or small. Thus endowed, he felt it proper to speak loudly and with authority on all subjects that might enter the mind of man. Lesser men like Klein-Piet, however, said he was a big-mouthed boaster, a great wind-maker.

  So Dominee Malherbe was puzzled when Groot-Piet asked for an urgent appointment to speak to him about a private matter which was weighing on his mind. It was not often that members of his congregation asked for such appointments. In fact, the Dominee could not remember when last a member of one of the old, rich established families had unburdened his soul to him. But was it so surprising? Did not the New Testament warn us that the rich would not find it easy to get into heaven? Not that the Dominee regarded a penitent entry into his book-lined study as entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, but it was, he felt confident, a putting of a foot on the first lowly rung of the ladder of salvation. And he noted, with a wry smile at himself, that he might have used that lowly rung image a little too often.

  The poor were another matter, of course. They often entered his study, humbly acknowledging their faults and accepting the judgements of God in whatever unpredictable way they came (frequently as decisions from the kerkraad, or even from the Dominee himself). There was sometimes a correlation between the thoroughness of their penitence and the pressure of poverty upon them. They needed clothing and education for their excessive number of children. And he sighed at himself: how much his own judgement of his people was determined by their wealth and worldly status, not by their moral worth. For instance, the humble Hans Lategan, lacking in all things, including wits, who eked out a life on a plot on the river rented from ‘Maljan’ Delport – Delport who owned three farms and half a dozen rural plots. Dominee Malherbe had no doubt about who would get into heaven first of those two, and sighed again. He really must grasp the nettle of that unresolved Maljan/Hans scandal. It was all very difficult, because Maljan gave to the Church ten times as much as Hans, and almost as much as Groot-Piet. Maljan and Groot-Piet were princely givers. But they did not give the Biblical tithe, like Lategan did. If only the big farmers would give a tenth! How that would transform the Church’s work!

  Not that he, personally, had anything to complain of. He had recently moved into a magnificent new pastorie. Even the old one, with its twelve rooms, had been a palace compared with those of the other ministers in the dorp. The stipends of the Methodists and Anglicans were really rather disgraceful. But what could one expect from an easy-going, divided, inconsistent, almost godless lot like the English? Besides, their ministers and parsons were partly to blame. They preached their churches empty with sermons packed with political ideas that would ruin their parishioners if put into practice.

  At this point there was a knock at the door. Klein-Piet Castelyn was shown in, all sinew and muscle, thin-lipped and gimlet-eyed, the respected and deadly elder from the poorest district or wyk – deadly, because he took his elder’s mantle as seriously as Elisha took his, and seemed to regard all people in authority, including the mayor, the magistrate and the Dominee, as no better than close relatives of Ahab and Jezebel. He was wearing that mantle now, no doubt, he’d say, as a sign of respect; but the Dominee knew better. Ostensibly Klein-Piet came to report on the affairs of his charges; in fact, to tell the Dominee that the people, not only in his own street, but throughout the town, were very impatient to know what action had been taken in the Maljan Delport/Hans Lategan affair.

  Dominee Malherbe said: ‘Mr Delport has been away. I have arranged to see him tomorrow.’ Klein-Piet’s eyes narrowed slightly. The small-town folk, many of them impoverished blood relatives of the affluent big farmers, were tired of being bullied and treated with contempt. Not least Klein-Piet himself. The Dominee sometimes wondered whether Klein-Piet’s zeal for the poor and down-trodden did not spring from a bitter belief that his father had been dispossessed of his farm by Groot-Piet’s father – the old, old story of Jacob and Esau. On the issue of Maljan, however, the two Piets would have been as one – although Groot-Piet’s dislike sprang from an old boundary dispute and their rivalry at various sales, not over bad behaviour in the house of God. Perhaps that old boundary dispute had flared up again, perhaps that was one of the things on Groot-Piet’s mind.

  Klein-Piet, nearing seventy, left dissatisfied with the young, fifty-year-old Dominee’s bland manner. Of course the Dominee had to present an impartial front; of course he had to hear Maljan’s side of the story too, of course – but the man’s lack of zeal for the house of God was only too apparent.

  Klein-Piet suspected, and with justification, that the Dominee found it difficult to take all the sins of his community as seriously as he should. He preferred to laugh at them in a kindly way. He was full of jokes, was the Dominee, full of jokes. But this matter of Hans Lategan was not a joking matter: assault was assault, whether inside or outside the church; and if the church authorities would not take action, he, Klein-Piet, would raise funds, poor as he was, to take the matter to the civil courts. Justice must be done, and be seen to be done. He left the pastorie with the corners of his mouth down, frowning.

  If only the victim of the assault, Hans, had a bit more fight in him, if only Hans had the spirit of his wife, Miem –

  The Dominee sought relief from the
Maljan/Hans fracas by speculating on what troubles Groot-Piet would put on his plate. Was Mrs Groot-Piet threatening to leave him again, to live in the Cape, close to her classy relatives, ‘to enjoy a breath of civilisation before she died’? Or was it those daughters’ marriages again? Or the son at Stellenbosch, who refused point-blank to touch a rugby ball in spite of a personal invitation from Danie Craven to attend practices? The Dominee hoped Piet’s troubles were of this familial kind, and not to do with property, but, with Groot-Piet, family so easily got mixed up with property …

  Perhaps Groot-Piet had lost his temper again with one of his labourers, and beaten him up so badly that he’d had to drive him into Outpatients for attention, with the story that he’d been the victim of a feud; perhaps he’d been tempted to put too much money on the Durban July and lost it; it was unlikely that he would feel penitent or worried if he had won; or perhaps he’d indulged in some adultery with that old flame of his in the next village during his wife’s visit to Cape Town; or even gone across the colour line for a bit of fun. Not probable with Piet, though, not at his age. But, alas, anything was possible with people, any thing, even murder. Not that he’d had to deal with a murderer often – only twice. Manslaughter? Well, – and he thought of Maljan’s violence. The Dominee wondered, wincing, whether he was a fit person to be a minister of religion, who has to be a specialist in folly and sin.

  Groot-Piet was so big that he looked ridiculous when he sat on the chair the Dominee offered him: his knees high, like a giant sitting on a commode.

  ‘Dominee’, he said, and stopped.

  ‘Yes, Oom?’ he responded gently, ending the silence with his most friendly voice.

  ‘Dominee, we are in trouble, big trouble.’