It was dangerous to walk about in the veld, they said. Exciting times followed. There was a great deal of shooting at the leopard and a great deal of running away from him. The amount of Martini and Mauser fire I heard in the krantzes reminded me of nothing so much as the First Boer War. And the amount of running away reminded me of nothing so much as the Second Boer War.
But always the leopard escaped unharmed. Somehow, I felt sorry for him. The way he had first sniffed at me and then lain down beside me that day under the withaak was a strange thing that I couldn’t understand. I thought of the Bible, where it is written that the lion shall lie down with the lamb.
But I also wondered if I hadn’t dreamt it all. The manner in which those things had befallen me was all so unearthly. The leopard began to take up a lot of my thoughts. And there was no man to whom I could talk about it who would be able to help me in any way. Even now, as I am telling you this story, I am expecting you to wink at me, like Krisjan Lemmer did.
Still, I can only tell you the things that happened as I saw them, and what the rest was about only Africa knows.
It was some time before I again walked along the path that leads through the bush to where the withaaks are. But I didn’t lie down on the grass again. Because when I reached the place, I found that the leopard had got there before me. He was lying on the same spot, half-curled up in the withaak’s shade, and his forepaws were folded as a dog’s are, sometimes. But he lay very still. And even from the distance where I stood I could see the red splash on his breast where a Mauser bullet had gone.
The Widow
There had been no rain in the Potchefstroom District for many months, and so the ground was very hard that morning, and the picks and shovels of the kaffirs rang on the gravel, by the side of the mud hut that had been used as a courthouse.
I was a boy then. It was at the time when the Transvaal was divided into four separate republics, and Potchefstroom, which was a small village, was the capital of the southern republic.
For several days there had been much activity in the courthouse. From distant parts the farmers had come to attend the trial of Tjaart van Rensburg. Only a few could get inside the court. The rest watched at the door, crowding forward eagerly after each witness had stepped down from the stand; those inside told them what evidence had been given.
Naturally there was much excitement over these court proceedings, and in Potchefstroom people talked of little else but the Transvaal’s first murder trial.
The whole thing started when Andries Theron was found beside the borehole on his farm. He had been pumping water for his cattle. One Rossouw, a neighbour of Andries Theron’s, passing by in his ox-wagon, saw a man lying next to the pump-handle.
Thus it was that Francina Theron saw her husband arrive home in a stranger’s ox-wagon, with a piece of bucksail pulled over his body, and a Martini bullet in his heart. The landdrost’s men came from Potchefstroom and proceeded to investigate the murder, spending much of their time, as landdrosts’ men always do, in trying to frighten the wrong people into confessing.
But afterwards they got their information.
They say there was a large crowd at the funeral of Andries Theron, which took place at the foot of a koppie on the far end of his farm. They came, the women in black clothes and the men in their Sunday hats; and in that sad procession that wound slowly over the veld, following the wagon with the coffin on it, there were also two landdrost’s men.
Among the mourners was the dead man’s cousin, Tjaart van Rensburg. The minister did not take long over the funeral service. He said a few simple words about the tragic way in which Andries Theron had died, adding that no man knew when his hour was come. He then spoke a brief message of comfort to the widow, Francina, and offered up a prayer for the dead man’s soul.
The last notes of the Boer hymn had died on the veld, and the crowd had already begun to move away from the graveside, when one of the landdrost’s men put his hand on Tjaart van Rensburg’s shoulder. With an officer of the law on each side of him, the fetters on his wrists, Tjaart van Rensburg led the procession down the stony road.
The prisoner had turned very pale. But they all noticed that his head was erect and his step firm, when he walked to the bluegum trees on the other side of the hill, where the Government Cape-cart waited.
A month later the trial commenced in Potchefstroom.
Andries Theron’s widow, Francina, was a slenderly built woman, still in her early twenties. She had been very pretty at one time, with light-hearted ways and a merry laugh. But the shock of her husband’s death had changed her in an hour. She did not weep when Rossouw, who had a good heart but blunt ways, informed her that he had found her husband lying dead on the veld.
“I was lucky,” Rossouw said, “to have found him before the vultures did.”
“Where is he?” Francina asked.
“On my wagon,” Rossouw answered, “under the first bucksail you come to. Next to the sacks of potatoes.”
In some respects Rossouw did not have what you would call a real delicacy of feeling. But he possessed a sombre thing of the veld, which told him that he must not follow Francina to the wagon, because it was right that, at her first meeting with her dead husband, a wife should be alone.
Francina was at the wagon a long time.
When she came back she was sadly changed. The colour had left her cheeks and her lips. Her mouth sagged at the corners. But in her tearless eyes there was a lost and hopeless look, a dreadful desolation that frightened Rossouw when he saw it, so that he made no effort to comfort her.
It was the same with the women who came to console Francina. If a woman wanted to take Francina in her arms, so that she could weep on her bosom, there was that look in her eyes that spoke of a sorrow that must be for always.
You can’t do much, if all you have to offer a widow is human sympathy, and she looks back at you with wide eyes that seem to want nothing more from this world or the world to come. You get uneasy, then, and feel that you have no right to trespass on this sort of sorrow.
That was what happened to the women who knew Francina. They were kind to her in little ways. When the time for the murder trial came, and it seemed likely that Francina would be called as a witness, a woman accompanied her to Potchefstroom and stayed with her there. But even to this woman, in her grief, Francina remained a stranger.
In fact, this woman always said, afterwards, that during all the time she was with her, Francina spoke to her only once; and that was when they were at the Mooi River, which flows through Potchefstroom, and Francina said how pretty the yellow flowers grew on the banks of the river.
So the trial began. Every morning, at nine o’clock, Tjaart van Rensburg was led from the gaol to the courthouse with the mud walls. There were always many people standing around to see him pass. I saw him quite often. The impression I get, when I look back to that time, is that Tjaart van Rensburg was a broad-shouldered man of about thirty, taller than the guards who escorted him, and rather good-looking.
I remember the way he walked, with his head up, and his hat on a slant, and his wrists close together in front of him. On each side of him was a burgher with a bandolier and a rifle.
The landdrost looked important, as a landdrost should look at his first murder trial. The jurymen also looked very dignified. But the most pompous of all was Rossouw. Over and over again, to anyone who would listen, he told the story of how he discovered the body before the vultures did. He told everybody just what evidence he was going to give, and what theories he was going to put forward as to how the murder was committed.
He even brought his ox-wagon along to the courthouse and drew it up on the sidewalk, so that the landdrost and the jurymen had difficulty in getting in at the door. He said he was willing to demonstrate to the court just at what pace he drove the body from the borehole to Andries Theron’s house.
Afterwards, Rossouw was the most disappointed man I ever saw. For he was only kept in the witnes
s-box for about five minutes, and they wouldn’t listen to any of his theories.
On the other hand, a kaffir, who saw Tjaart van Rensburg arguing with the deceased in front of the borehole, gave evidence for over three hours. And another kaffir, who heard a shot and thought he saw Tjaart van Rensburg running down the road with a gun, was in the witness-box for the best part of a day.
“What do you think of this for a piece of nonsense?” Rossouw asked of a group standing about the courthouse. “I am a white man. I have borne arms for the Transvaal in three kaffir wars. And I am only in the witness-box for five minutes, when they tell me to step down and move my ox-wagon away from the door. And yet a raw kaffir, who can’t even sign his name, but has got to put a cross at the foot of the things he has said – this raw kaffir is allowed to stand there wasting the time of the court for ten hours on end.
“What’s more,” Rossouw went on, “Tjaart van Rensburg’s lawyer never once cross-questioned me or called me a liar. Whereas he spent half a day in calling that kaffir names. Doesn’t that lawyer think that my evidence is of any value to the court?”
Rossouw said a lot more things like that. Some of the burghers laughed at his remarks, but others took him seriously, and agreed with him, and said it was a shame that such things should be allowed, and that it all proved that the president did not have the interests of the nation at heart.
You can see, from this, that it must have been a difficult task to govern the Transvaal in those days.
The case lasted almost a week, what with all the witnesses, and the long speeches made by the prosecution and the defence. Also, the landdrost said a great many learned things about the Roman-Dutch law. During all this time Francina sat in court with that same unearthly look in her eyes. They say that she never once wept. Even when the doctor, a Hollander, explained how he cut open Andries Theron’s body, and found that the bullet had gone through his heart, the expression on Francina’s face did not change.
People who knew her grew anxious about her state. They said it was impossible for her to continue in this way, with that stony grief inside her. They said that if she did not break down and weep she could not go on living much longer.
Anyway, Francina was not called as a witness. Perhaps they felt that there was nothing of importance that she could say.
So the days passed.
And Rossouw was still complaining about the unfair way he had been treated in the witness-box, when Tjaart van Rensburg, his hat tilted over the eye and his wrists close together in front of him, strode into the courthouse for the last time.
The landdrost looked less important on that morning. And the jurymen did not seem very happy. But they were not the kind of men to shirk a duty they had sworn to carry out.
Tjaart van Rensburg was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was passed on him.
“Yes, I am guilty,” he answered. “I shot Andries Theron.”
His voice was steady, and as he spoke he twirled the brim of his hat slowly round and round between his fingers.
And that was how it came about that, early one winter’s morning, a number of kaffirs were swinging their picks into the hard gravel, digging a hole by the side of the courthouse.
A small group had gathered at the graveside. Some were kneeling in prayer. Among the spectators was Francina Theron, looking very frail and slender in her widow’s weeds. When the grave was deep enough a roughly constructed coffin was lifted out of a cart that bore, painted on its side, the arms of the republic.
The grave was filled in. The newly made mound of gravel and red earth was patted smooth with the shovels.
Then, for the first time since her husband’s death, Francina wept.
She flung herself at full-length on the mound, and trailed her fingers through the pebbles and fresh earth. And calling out tender and passionate endearments, Francina sobbed noisily on the grave of her lover.
Willem Prinsloo’s Peach Brandy
No (Oom Schalk Lourens said) you don’t get flowers in the Groot Marico. It is not a bad district for mealies, and I once grew quite good onions in a small garden I made next to the dam. But what you can really call flowers are rare things here. Perhaps it’s the heat. Or the drought.
Yet whenever I talk about flowers, I think of Willem Prinsloo’s farm on Abjaterskop, where the dance was, and I think of Fritz Pretorius, sitting pale and sick by the roadside, and I think of the white rose that I wore in my hat, jauntily. But most of all I think of Grieta.
If you walk over my farm to the hoogte, and look towards the north-west, you can see Abjaterskop behind the ridge of the Dwarsberge. People will tell you that there are ghosts on Abjaterskop, and that it was once the home of witches. I can believe that. I was at Abjaterskop only once. That was many years ago. And I never went there again. Still, it wasn’t the ghosts that kept me away; nor was it the witches.
Grieta Prinsloo was due to come back from the finishing school at Zeerust, where she had gone to learn English manners and dictation and other high-class subjects. Therefore Willem Prinsloo, her father, arranged a big dance on his farm at Abjaterskop to celebrate Grieta’s return.
I was invited to the party. So was Fritz Pretorius. So was every white person in the district, from Derdepoort to Ramoutsa. What was more, practically everybody went. Of course, we were all somewhat nervous about meeting Grieta. With all the superior things she had learnt at the finishing school, we wouldn’t be able to talk to her in a chatty sort of way, just as though she were an ordinary Boer girl. But what fetched us all to Abjaterskop in the end was our knowledge that Willem Prinsloo made the best peach brandy in the district.
Fritz Pretorius spoke to me of the difficulty brought about by Grieta’s learning.
“Yes, jong,” he said, “I am feeling pretty shaky about talking to her, I can tell you. I have been rubbing up my education a bit, though. Yesterday I took out my old slate that I last used when I left school seventeen years ago, and I did a few sums. I did some addition and subtraction. I tried a little multiplication, too. But I have forgotten how it is done.”
I told Fritz that I would have liked to have helped him, but I had never learnt as far as multiplication.
The day of the dance arrived. The post-cart bearing Grieta to her father’s house passed through Drogedal in the morning. In the afternoon I got dressed. I wore a black jacket, fawn trousers, and a pink shirt. I also put on the brown boots that I had bought about a year before, and that I had never had occasion to wear. For I would have looked silly walking about the farm in a pair of shop boots when everybody else wore homemade veldskoens.
I believed, as I got on my horse, and set off down the Government Road, with my hat rakishly on one side, that I would be easily the best-dressed young man at that dance.
It was getting on towards sunset when I arrived at the foot of Abjaterskop, which I had to skirt in order to reach Willem Prinsloo’s farm, nestling in a hollow behind the hills. I felt, as I rode, that it was stupid for a man to live in a part that was reputed to be haunted. The trees grew taller and denser, as they always do on rising ground. And they also got a lot darker.
All over the place were queer, heavy shadows. I didn’t like the look of them. I remembered stories I had heard of the witches of Abjaterskop, and what they did to travellers who lost their way in the dark. It seemed an easy thing to lose your way among those tall trees. Accordingly, I spurred my horse on to a gallop, to get out of this gloomy region as quickly as possible. After all, a horse is sensitive about things like ghosts and witches, and it was my duty to see my horse was not frightened unnecessarily. Especially as a cold wind suddenly sprang up through the poort, and once or twice it sounded as though an evil voice were calling my name. I started riding fast then. But a few moments later I looked round and realised the position. It was Fritz Pretorius galloping along behind me.
“What was your hurry?” Fritz asked when I had slowed down to allow his overtaking me.
“I wished to get throu
gh those trees before it was too dark,” I answered, “I didn’t want my horse to get frightened.”
“I suppose that’s why you were riding with your arms round his neck,” Fritz observed, “to soothe him.”
I did not reply. But what I did notice was that Fritz was also very stylishly dressed. True, I beat him as far as shirt and boots went, but he was dressed in a new grey suit, with his socks pulled up over the bottoms of his trousers. He also had a handkerchief which he ostentatiously took out of his pocket several times.
Of course, I couldn’t be jealous of a person like Fritz Pretorius. I was only annoyed at the thought that he was making himself ridiculous by going to a party with an outlandish thing like a handkerchief.
We arrived at Willem Prinsloo’s house. There were so many ox-wagons drawn up on the veld that the place looked like a laager. Prinsloo met us at the door.
“Go right through, kêrels,” he said, “the dancing is in the voorhuis. The peach brandy is in the kitchen.”
Although the voorhuis was big it was so crowded as to make it almost impossible to dance. But it was not as crowded as the kitchen. Nor was the music in the voorhuis – which was provided by a number of men with guitars and concertinas – as loud as the music in the kitchen, where there was no band, but each man sang for himself.
We knew from these signs that the party was a success.
When I had been in the kitchen for about half an hour I decided to go into the voorhuis. It seemed a long way, now, from the kitchen to the voorhuis, and I had to lean against the wall several times to think. I passed a number of other men who were also leaning against the wall like that, thinking. One man even found that he could think best by sitting on the floor with his head in his arms.
You could see that Willem Prinsloo made good peach brandy.
The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories Page 9
