Then Lettie showed me a few bits of paper that she had found under Paulus’s pillow. It was the same kind of verses that he had been writing for a long time, all about mimosa trees and clouds and veld flowers and that sort of nonsense. When I read those things I felt sorry that I didn’t hit him harder with the sjambok that day he kicked me on the shin.
“He does not work even as much as a piccanin,” Hendrik’s wife Lettie said. “All day he writes on these bits of paper. I can’t understand what is wrong with him.”
“A man who writes things like that will come to no good,” I said to her. “And I am sorry for you. It is not good the way Paulus is treating you.”
Immediately Lettie turned on me like one of those yellow-haired wild-cats, and told me I had no right to talk about her son. She said I ought to be ashamed of myself and that, no matter what Paulus was like, he was always a much better man than any impudent Dopper who dared to talk about him. She said a lot of other things besides, and I was pleased when Hendrik returned. But I saw then how much Lettie loved Paulus. Also, it just shows you that you never know where you are with a woman.
Then one day Paulus went away. He just left home without saying a word to anybody.
Hendrik Oberholzer was very much troubled. He rode about to all the farms around here and asked if anyone had seen his son. He also went to Zeerust and told the police, but the police did not do much. All they ever did was to get our people fined for bringing scraggy kaffir cattle across the line. The sergeant at the station was a raw Hollander who listened to everything Hendrik said, and then at the end told Hendrik, after he had written something in a book, that perhaps what had happened was that Paulus had gone away.
Of course, Hendrik came to me, and I did what I could to help him. I went up to the Marico River right to where it flows into the Limpopo, and from there I came back along the Bechuanaland Protectorate border. Everywhere I enquired for Paulus. I was many days away from the farm.
I had hardly got back home when Hendrik called for news. From his lands he had seen me come through the poort and he had hastened over to see me.
We sat down in the voorkamer and filled our pipes.
“Well, Lourens,” Hendrik said, and his eyes were on the floor, “have you heard anything about Paulus?”
It was early afternoon, with the sun shining in through the window, and in Hendrik’s brown beard were white hairs that I had not noticed before.
I saw how Hendrik looked at the floor when he asked about his son. So I told him the truth, for I could see then that he already knew.
“The Lord will make all things right,” I said.
“Yes, God knows what is best,” Hendrik Oberholzer answered. “I heard about ––––. They told me yesterday.”
Hendrik could not bring himself to say that which we both knew about his son.
For, on my way back along the Bechuanaland border, I had come across Paulus. It was in some Mtosa huts outside Ramoutsa. There were about a dozen huts of red clay standing in a circle amongst the bushes. In front of each hut a kaffir lay stretched out in the sun with a blanket over him. All day long these kaffirs lie there in the sun, smoking dagga and drinking beer. Their wives and children sow the kaffir-corn and the mealies and look after the cattle. And with no clothes on, but just a blanket over him, Paulus also lay amongst those kaffirs. I looked at him only once and turned away, without knowing whether he had seen me.
Next to him a kaffir woman sat stringing white beads on to a piece of copper wire.
That was what I told Hendrik Oberholzer.
“It would be much better if he was dead,” Hendrik said to me. “To think that a son of mine should turn kaffir.”
That was very terrible. Hendrik Oberholzer was right when he said it would be better if Paulus was dead.
I had known before of low-class Uitlanders going to live in a kraal and marrying kaffir women and spending the rest of their lives sleeping in the sun and drinking bujali. But that was the first time I had heard of that being done by a decent Boer son.
Shortly afterwards Hendrik left. He said no more about Paulus, except to let me know that he no longer had a son. After that I didn’t speak about Paulus either.
In a little while all the farmers in the Groot Marico knew what had happened, and they talked much of the shame that had come to Hendrik Oberholzer’s family. But Hendrik went on just the same as always, except that he looked a great deal older.
Things continued in that way for about six months. Or perhaps it was a little longer. I am not sure of the date, although I know that it was shortly after the second time that I had to pay ten pounds for cattle-smuggling.
One morning I was in the lands talking to Hendrik about putting some more wires on the fence, so that we wouldn’t need herds for our sheep, when a young kaffir on a donkey came up to us with a note. He said that Baas Paulus had given him that note the night before, and had told him to bring it over in the morning. He also told us that Baas Paulus was dead.
Hendrik read the note. Then he tore it up. I never got to learn what Paulus had written to him.
“Will you come with me, Lourens?” he asked.
I went with him. He got the kaffirs to inspan the mule-cart, and also to put in a shovel and a pick-axe. All the way to the Mtosa huts Hendrik did not speak. It was a fresh, pleasant morning in spring. The grass everywhere was long and green, and when we got to the higher ground, where the road twists round the krantz, there was still a light mist hanging over the trees. The mules trotted steadily, so that it was a good while before midday when we reached the clump of withaaks that, with their tall, white trunks, stood high above the other thorn-trees. Hendrik stopped the cart. He jumped off and threw the reins to the kaffir in the back seat.
We left the road and followed one of the cow-paths through the bush. After we had gone a few yards we could see the red of the clay huts. But we also saw, on a branch overhanging the footpath, a length of ox-riem, the end of which had been cut. The ox-riem swayed in the wind, and at once, when I saw Hendrik Oberholzer’s face, I knew what had happened. After writing the letter to his father Paulus had hanged himself on that branch and the kaffirs had afterwards found him there and had cut him down.
We walked into the circle of huts. The kaffirs lay on the ground under their blankets. But nobody lay in front of that hut where, on that last occasion, I had seen Paulus. Only in front of the door that same kaffir woman was sitting, still stringing white beads on to copper wires. She did not speak when we came up. She just shifted away from the door to let us pass in, and as she moved aside I saw that she was with child.
Inside there was something under a blanket. We knew that it was Paulus. So he lay the day I saw him for the first time with the Mtosas, with the exception that now the blanket was over his head as well. Only his bare toes stuck out underneath the blanket, and on them was red clay that seemed to be freshly dried. Apparently the kaffirs had not found him hanging from the tree until the morning.
Between us we carried the body to the mule-cart.
Then for the first time Hendrik spoke.
“I will not have him back on my farm,” he said. “Let him stay out here with the kaffirs. Then he will be near later on, for his child by the kaffir woman to come to him.”
But, although Hendrik’s voice sounded bitter, there was also sadness in it.
So, by the side of the road to Ramoutsa, amongst the withaaks, we made a grave for Paulus Oberholzer. But the ground was hard. Therefore it was not until late in the afternoon that we had dug a grave deep enough to bury him.
“I knew the Lord would make it right,” Hendrik said when we got into the mule-cart.
The Gramophone
That was a terrible thing that happened with Krisjan Lemmer, Oom Schalk Lourens said. It was pretty bad for me, of course, but it was much worse for Krisjan.
I remember well when it happened, for that was the time when the first gramophone came into the Marico Bushveld. Krisjan bought the machine off a
Jew trader from Pretoria. It’s funny when you come to think of it. When there is anything that we Boers don’t want you can be quite sure that the Jew traders will bring it to us, and that we’ll buy it, too.
I remember how I laughed when a Jew came to my house once with a hollow piece of glass that had a lot of silver stuff in it. The Jew told me that the silver in the glass moved up and down to show you if it was hot or cold. Of course, I said that was all nonsense. I know when it is cold enough for me to put on my woollen shirt and jacket, without having first to go and look at that piece of glass. And I also know when it is too hot to work – which it is almost all the year round in this part of the Marico Bushveld. In the end I bought the thing. But it has never been the same since little Annie stirred her coffee with it.
Anyway, if the Jew traders could bring us the miltsiek, we would buy that off them as well, and pay them so much down, and the rest when all our cattle are dead.
Therefore, when a trader brought Krisjan Lemmer a second-hand gramophone, Krisjan sold some sheep and bought the thing. For many miles round the people came to hear the machine talk. Krisjan was very proud of his gramophone, and when he turned the handle and put in the little sharp pins, it was just like a child that has found something new to play with. The people who came to hear the gramophone said it was very wonderful what things man would think of making when once the devil had taken a hold on him properly. They said that, if nothing else, the devil has got good brains. I also thought it was wonderful, not that the gramophone could talk, but that people wanted to listen to it doing something that a child of seven could do as well. Most of the songs the gramophone played were in English. But there was one song in Afrikaans. It was “O Brandewyn laat my staan.” Krisjan played that often; the man on the round plate sang it rather well. Only the way he pronounced the words made it seem as though he was a German trying to make “O Brandewyn laat my staan” sound English. It was just like the rooineks, I thought. First they took our country and governed it for us in a better way than we could do ourselves; now they wanted to make improvements in our language for us.
But if people spoke much about Krisjan Lemmer’s gramophone, they spoke a great deal more about the unhappy way in which he and his wife lived together. Krisjan Lemmer was then about thirty-five. He was a big, strongly built man, and when he moved about you could see the muscles of his shoulders stand out under his shirt. He was also a surprisingly good-natured man who seldom became annoyed about anything. Even with the big drought, when he had to pump water for his cattle all day and the pump broke, so that he could get no water for his cattle, he just walked into the house and lit his pipe and said that it was the Lord’s will. He said that perhaps it was as well that the pump broke, because, if the Lord wanted the cattle to get water, He wouldn’t have sent the drought. That was the kind of man Krisjan Lemmer was. And he would never have set hand to the pump again, either, was it not that the next day rain fell, whereby Krisjan knew that the Lord meant him to understand that the drought was over. Yet, when anything angered him he was bad.
But the unfortunate part of Krisjan Lemmer was that he could not get on with his wife Susannah. Always they quarrelled. Susannah, as we knew, was a good deal younger than her husband, but often she didn’t look so very much younger. She was small and fair. Her skin had not been much darkened by the Bushveld sun, for she always wore a very wide kappie, the folds of which she pinned down over the upper part of her face whenever she went out of the house. Her hair was the colour of the beard you see on the yellow mealies just after they have ripened. She had very quiet ways. In company she hardly ever talked, unless it was to say that the Indian shopkeeper in Ramoutsa put roasted kremetart roots with the coffee he sold us, or that the spokes of the mule-cart came loose if you didn’t pour water over them.
You see, what she said were things that everybody knew and that no one argued about. Even the Indian storekeeper didn’t argue about the kremetart roots. He knew that was the best part of his coffee. And yet, although she was so quiet and unassuming, Susannah was always quarrelling with her husband. This, of course, was foolish of her, especially as Krisjan was a man with gentle ways until somebody purposely annoyed him. Then he was not quite so gentle. For instance, there was the time when the chief of the Mtosa kaffirs passed him in the veld and said “Good morning” without taking the leopard skin off his head and calling Krisjan baas. Krisjan was fined ten pounds by the magistrate and had to pay for the doctor during the three months that the Mtosa chief walked with a stick.
One day I went to Krisjan Lemmer’s farm to borrow a roll of baling-wire for the teff. Krisjan had just left for the krantz to see if he could shoot a ribbok. Susannah was at home alone. I could see that she had been crying. So I went and sat next to her on the riempiesbank and took her hand.
“Don’t cry, Susannah,” I said, “everything will be all right. You must just learn to understand Krisjan a little better. He is not a bad fellow in his way.”
At first she was angry with me for saying anything against Krisjan, and she told me to go home. But afterwards she became more reasonable about it, allowing me to move up a bit closer to her and to hold her hand a little tighter. In that way I comforted her. I would have comforted her even more, perhaps, only I couldn’t be sure how long Krisjan would remain in the krantz; and I didn’t like what happened to the Mtosa kaffir chief.
I asked her to play the gramophone for me, not because I wanted to hear it, but because you always pretend to take an interest in the things that your friends like, especially when you borrow a roll of baling-wire off them. When anybody visits me and gets my youngest son Willie to recite texts from the Bible, I know that before he leaves he is going to ask me if I will be using my mealie-planter this week.
So Susannah put the round plate on the thing, and turned the handle, and the gramophone played “O Brandewyn laat my staan.” You couldn’t hear too well what the man was singing, but I have said all that before.
Susannah laughed as she listened, and in that moment somehow she seemed very much younger than her husband. She looked very pretty, too. But I noticed also that when the music ended it was as though she was crying.
Then Krisjan came in. I left shortly afterwards. But I had heard his footsteps coming up the path, so there was no need for me to leave in a hurry.
But just before I went Susannah brought in coffee. It was weak coffee; but I didn’t say anything about it. I am very much like an Englishman that way. It’s what they call manners. When I am visiting strangers and they give me bad coffee I don’t throw it out and say that the stuff isn’t fit for a kaffir. I just drink it and then don’t go back to that house again. But Krisjan spoke about it.
“Vrou,” he said, “the coffee is weak.”
“Yes,” Susannah answered.
“It’s very weak,” he went on.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Why do you always …” Krisjan began again.
“Oh, go to hell,” Susannah said.
Then they went at it, swearing at one another, and they didn’t even hear me when, on leaving, in the manner of the Bushveld, I said, “Goodbye and may the good Lord bless us all.”
It was a dark night that time, about three months later, when I again went to Krisjan Lemmer’s house by mule-cart. I was leaving early in the morning for Zeerust with a load of mealies and wanted to borrow Krisjan’s wagon-sail. Before I was halfway to his house it started raining. Big drops fell on my face. There was something queer about the sound of the wind in the wet trees, and when I drove through the poort where the Government Road skirts the line of the Dwarsberge the place looked very dark to me. I thought of death and things like that. I thought of pale strange ghosts that come upon you from behind … suddenly. I felt sorry, then, that I had not brought a kaffir along. It was not that I was afraid of being alone; but it would have been useful, on the return, to have a kaffir sitting in the back of the mule-cart to look after the wagon-sail for me.
The rain stop
ped.
I came to the farm’s graveyard, where had been buried members of the Lemmer family and of other families who had lived there before the Lemmers, and I knew that I was near the house. It seemed to me to be a very silly sort of thing to make a graveyard so close to the road. There’s no sense in that. Some people, for instance, who are ignorant and a bit superstitious are liable, perhaps, to start shivering a little, especially if the night is dark and there is a wind and the mule-cart is bumpy.
There were no lights in the Lemmers’ house when I got there. I knocked a long time before the door was opened, and then it was Krisjan Lemmer standing in the doorway with a lantern held above his head. He looked agitated at first, until he saw who it was and then he smiled.
“Come in, Neef Schalk,” he said. “I am pleased you are here. I was beginning to feel lonely – you know, the rain and the wind and – ”
“But you are not alone,” I replied. “What about Susannah?”
“Oh, Susannah has gone back to her mother,” Krisjan answered. “She went yesterday.”
We went into the voorkamer and sat down. Krisjan Lemmer lit a candle and we talked and smoked. The window-panes looked black against the night. The wind blew noisily through openings between the wall and the thatched roof. The candle-flame flickered unsteadily. It could not be pleasant for Krisjan Lemmer alone in that house without his wife. He looked restless and uncomfortable. I tried to make a joke about it.
“What’s the matter with you, Krisjan?” I asked. “You’re looking so unhappy, anybody would think you’ve still got your wife here with you.”
Krisjan laughed, and I wished he hadn’t. His laughter did not sound natural; it was too loud. Somehow I got a cold kind of feeling in my blood. It was rather a frightening thing, the wind blowing incessantly outside the house, and inside the house a man laughing too loudly.
“Let us play the gramophone, Krisjan,” I said.
The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories Page 5
