The Complete Voorkamer Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  And when Hendrik Prinsloo drove off eventually, in his Cape-cart, into the night, there was handshaking all round, and they cheered him, and everybody asked him to be sure and come round again to the next school concert, also.

  Next day there was only the locked door of the old school building to show that it was the end of term.

  And at the side of a footpath that a solitary child walked along to and from school lay fragments of a torn-up quarterly report.

  Railway Deputation

  Because it was nearing the end of the Volksraad session, it was decided that a deputation of Dwarsberg farmers would go and call on the member when he got back to Pretoria. Over the generations it had developed into an institution – a deputation of farmers going to see the Volksraad member about a railway line through the Bushveld.

  The promise of a railway line was an essential part of any election speech delivered north of Sephton’s Nek. A candidate would no more contemplate leaving that promise out of his speech than he would think of omitting the joke about the Cape Coloured man who went to sleep in the graveyard. For a candidate not to mention the railway line through the Bushveld would be just as much of a shock to his constituents as if the candidate had forgotten to ask an ouderling to open the meeting with prayer.

  But we never seemed to get that railway line, somehow.

  “What’s the good of a deputation, anyway?” Jurie Steyn asked. “When you think of what happened to the last deputation, I mean. Or take the deputation before that, when I was one of the delegates. Well, I’ll say this much for our Volksraad member – he did take us to the bioscope, because we were strangers to Pretoria. And he spoke up for us, too, when a girl with yellow hair sitting in a glass compartment asked how far from the front we wanted to be. And our Volksraad member said not too near the front, because it was a film with shooting in it, and he didn’t want anything to happen to us, seeing how we were his constituents.”

  Jurie Steyn said that the girl with yellow hair and a military-looking man in a red-and-gold uniform who opened the door for them – because they were friends of the Volksraad member, no doubt – laughed a good deal.

  “I must say that our Volksraad member is very considerate that way,” Jurie Steyn added. “It made us feel at home in the city, straight off, having that pretty girl and that high army man so friendly and everything. When we came out of the bioscope and they saw us again, the two of them started laughing right from the beginning, almost. That made us feel as though we belonged, if you understand what I mean.”

  Then Gysbert van Tonder told us about the time when he was a member of a railway-line deputation in Pretoria. And he said the same thing about how thoughtful the Volksraad member was in regard to giving the delegates pleasure.

  “He took us to the merry-go-round,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “To right in front of the merry-go-round, as far as his motor-car could go. And he told the man who collected the tickets that we were friends of his from the platteland and that the man must keep a look out to see that Oom Kasper Geel’s beard didn’t get tangled in the machinery that made the horses turn round and round. So everything was very friendly, straight away. You’ve got to admit that our Volksraad member has got a touch for that sort of thing. The man that our Volksraad member spoke to about us nearly fell off the merry-go-round himself, laughing.”

  We all said that we knew, of course, that a delegation that we sent from the Bushveld to Pretoria about the railway line could always be sure of a good time. Our Volksraad member never minded how much trouble he put himself to in the way of introducing the delegation to the best people, and providing the delegation with the classiest entertainments that the big city offered, and making the delegation feel really at home through the things he said about the delegation to persons standing around. Like the time he bought the delegates a packet of bananas and a tin of fish and he showed them where they could go and eat it.

  “He went with us right up to the building,” Gysbert van Tonder, who was one of the delegates on that occasion also, said. “In fact, he took us right in at the front door. There were koedoe and gemsbok and tsessebe horns all round the walls, just like in my voorkamer. But big – you’ve got no idea how big. And grand – all along the walls were glass cases and stuffed giraffes and medals with gold and brass flower-pots and things. It was the finest dining room you could ever imagine. And our Volksraad member told the owner of the place that we were from his constituency and that he must look after us and that, above all, he mustn’t keep us there. The owner, who was dressed all in blue, with a blue cap, laughed a lot, then, and so we were all as at home, there, as you please, and he showed us what staircase we had to go up by.”

  Gysbert van Tonder said that all they found to sit on, upstairs, was a tamboetie riempiesbank with a piece of string in front of it, that they had to unfasten, first. It was a comfortable enough riempiesbank, Gysbert said, but a bit on the old-fashioned side, he thought. On the left was a statue in white stone of a young woman without much clothes on who was bending forward with her arms folded, because of the cold. On the right was a stuffed hippopotamus.

  Gysbert van Tonder said that the delegation felt that the Volksraad member had that time done them really proud – using his influence to provide them with elegant surroundings in which to eat their bananas and tinned fish, which they opened with a pocket knife.

  But there was some sort of unfortunate misunderstanding about it afterwards, Gysbert van Tonder added. That was when another man wearing a blue suit and a blue cap came up and spoke to them. This man looked older than the owner and he was shorter and fatter. They took him to be the owner’s father-in-law. And he spoke about the banana peels lying on the floor and about their sitting calm as you like on a historical riempiesbank that hadn’t been in use for over a hundred and fifty years. But mostly the owner’s father-in-law spoke about the fish oil that had got splashed on the behind part of the young woman without clothes on when the pocket knife slipped that the delegates had opened the tin with.

  “And although we said to the owner’s father-in-law that we were railway-line delegates from the Dwarsberge, it didn’t seem to make much difference,” Gysbert van Tonder finished up. “He said we weren’t on the railway line now. I must say that I did feel afterwards that what the Volksraad member arranged for our happiness and comfort that time was a bit too stylish.”

  And Jurie Steyn said that after all that we still didn’t get a railway line, or anywhere near. All that happened, he remembered, was that the Government arranged for the weekly lorry through the Bushveld from Bekkersdal to be given a new coat of light-green paint.

  Then Oupa Bekker started telling us about the first railway-line deputation from the Dwarsberge that ever went to Pretoria. He was a member of that deputation.

  “The railway engine was quite different from what it’s like today, of course,” Oupa Bekker said. “It had a long thin chimney curving up from in front of it, I remember. And above the wheels it was all open and you could see right into the works and things. In the same way, I suppose, a Bushveld railway delegation in those days would have looked a lot different from the kind of deputation that will be going to Pretoria again at the end of the Volksraad session next month.”

  But he said that with the years the principle of the thing hadn’t changed so you would notice.

  “We had written to our Volksraad member to say we were coming, and what it was about,” Oupa Bekker continued. “And when he received us he was most sympathetic. He received us in his hotel room and he had a bottle of brandy sent up and he said it had to be the best, because only that was good enough for us. He said that in his opinion steam had come to stay and he showed us a lot of coloured pictures of engines that he had cut out of children’s papers. And he asked us would we rather have a condensing or a low-pressure engine.

  “Afterwards a man with black side-whiskers and wearing a stiff collar came into the hotel room and the Volksraad member told us that he was a civil engineer and could
help us a lot. The civil engineer started talking to us straight away about how important it was that we should have the right kind of printing on our railway timetables. We could see from that what a fine, full sort of mind the civil engineer had – a brain that took in everything. He also spoke about the kind of buns that we would sell in the station tea-rooms.

  “Later on, with the brandy and the talk, the civil engineer got really friendly, and started calling us by our first names, and all. We saw then that, in spite of his full mind, there was a playful side to him, also. Indeed, after a while, the civil engineer got so playful that he brought out three little thimbles and a pea, that he had found in one of his pockets. And, just to sort of pass the time, he asked us to guess under which thimble the pea was hidden.”

  Oupa Bekker sighed.

  “All the same,” he remarked, “that Volksraad member was a real gentleman. There are not many like him today. When he saw us back to the coach station he was apologising all the way because the civil engineer had cleaned us out.”

  White Ant

  Jurie Steyn was rubbing vigorously along the side of his counter with a rag soaked in paraffin. He was also saying things which, afterwards, in calmer moments, he would no doubt regret. When his wife came into the voorkamer with a tin of Cooper’s dip, Jurie Steyn stopped using that sort of language and contented himself with observations of a general nature about the hardships of life in the Marico.

  “All the same, they are very wonderful creatures, those little white ants,” the schoolmaster remarked. “Among the books I brought here into the Marico, to read in my spare time, is a book called The Life of the White Ant. Actually, of course, the white ant is not a true ant at all. The right name for the white ant is isoptera –”

  Jurie Steyn had another, and shorter, name for the white ant right on the tip of his tongue. And he started saying it, too. Only, he remembered his wife’s presence, in time, and so he changed the word to something else.

  “This isn’t the first time the white ants got in behind your counter,” At Naudé announced. “The last lot of stamps you sold me had little holes eaten all round the edges.”

  “That’s just perforations,” Jurie Steyn replied. “All postage stamps are that way. Next time you have got a postage stamp in your hand, just look at it carefully, and you’ll see. There’s a law about it, or something. In the department we talk of those little holes as perforations. It is what makes it possible for us, in the department, to tear stamps off easily, without having to use a scissors. Of course, it’s not everybody that knows that.”

  At Naudé looked as much hurt as surprised.

  “You mustn’t think I am so ignorant, Jurie,” he said severely. “Mind you, I am not saying that, perhaps, when this post office was first opened, and you were still new to affairs, and you couldn’t be expected to know about perforations and things, coming to this job raw, from behind the plough – I’m not saying that you mightn’t have cut the stamps loose with a scissors or a No. 3 pruning shears, even. At the start, mind you. And nobody would have blamed you for it, either. I mean, nobody ever has blamed you. We’ve all, in fact, admired the way you took to this work. I spoke to Gysbert van Tonder about it, too, more than once. Indeed, we both admired you. We spoke about how you stood behind that counter, with kraal manure in your hair, and all, just like you were Postmaster-General. Bold as brass, we said, too.”

  The subtle flattery in At Naudé’s speech served to mollify Jurie Steyn.

  “You said all that about me?” he asked. “You did?”

  “Yes,” At Naudé proceeded smoothly. “And we also admired the neat way you learnt to handle the post office rubber stamp, Gysbert and I. We said you held onto it like it was a branding iron. And we noticed how you would whistle, too, just before bringing the rubber stamp down on a parcel, and how you would step aside afterwards, quickly, just as though you half expected the parcel to jump up and poke you in the short ribs. To tell you the truth, Jurie, we were proud of you.”

  Jurie Steyn was visibly touched. And so he said that he admitted he had been a bit arrogant in the way he had spoken to At Naudé about the perforations. The white ants had got amongst his postage stamps, Jurie Steyn acknowledged – once. But what they ate you could hardly notice, he said. They just chewed a little around the edges.

  But Gysbert van Tonder said that, all the same, that was enough. His youngest daughter was a member of the Sunshine Children’s Club of the church magazine in Cape Town, Gysbert said. And his youngest daughter wrote to Aunt Susann, who was the woman editor, to say that it was her birthday. And when Aunt Susann mentioned his youngest daughter’s birthday in the Sunshine Club corner of the church magazine, Aunt Susann wrote that she was a little girl staying in the lonely African wilds. Gramadoelas was the word that Aunt Susann used, Gysbert van Tonder said. And all just because Aunt Susann had noticed the way that part of the springbok on the stamp on his youngest daughter’s letter had been eaten off by white ants, Gysbert van Tonder said.

  He added that his daughter had lost all interest in the Sunshine Children’s Club, since then. It sounded so uncivilised, the way Aunt Susann wrote about her.

  “As though we’re living in a grass hut and a string of crocodiles around it, with their teeth showing,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “As though it’s all still konsessie farms and we haven’t made improvements. And it’s no use trying to explain to her, either, that she must just feel sorry for Aunt Susann for not knowing any better. You can’t explain things like that to a child.”

  Nevertheless, while we all sympathised with Gysbert van Tonder, we had to concede that it was not in any way Jurie Steyn’s fault. We had all had experience of white ants, and we knew that, mostly, when you came along with the paraffin and Cooper’s dip, it was too late. By the time you saw those little tunnels, which the white ants made by sticking grains of sand together with spit, all the damage had already been done.

  The schoolmaster started talking some more about his book dealing with the life of the white ant, then, and he said that it was well known that the termite was the greatest plague of tropic lands. Several of us were able to help the schoolmaster right. As Chris Welman made it clear to him, the Marico was not in the tropics at all. The tropics were quite a long way up. The tropics started beyond Mochudi, even. A land-surveyor had established that much for us, a few years ago, on a coloured map. It was loose talk about wilds and gramadoelas and tropics that gave the Marico a bad name, we said. Like with that Aunt Susann of the Sunshine Children’s Club. Maybe we did have white ants here – lots of them, too – but we certainly weren’t in the tropics, like some countries we knew, and that we could mention, also, if we wanted to. Maybe what had happened was that the white ants had come down here from the tropics, we said. From way down beyond Mochudi and other side Frik Bonthuys’s farm, even. There was tropics for you, now, we said to the schoolmaster. Why, he should just see Frik Bonthuys’s shirt. Frik Bonthuys wore his shirt outside of his trousers, and the back part of it hung down almost onto the ground.

  The schoolmaster said that he thought we were being perhaps just a little too sensitive about this sort of thing. He was interested himself in the white ant, he explained, mainly from the scientific point of view. The white ant belonged to the insect world, that was very highly civil-ised, he said. All the insect world didn’t have was haemoglobin. The insect had the same blood in his veins as a white man, the schoolmaster said, except for haemoglobin.

  Gysbert van Tonder said that whatever that thing was, it was enough. Gysbert said it quite hastily, too. He said that when once you started making allowances for the white ant, that way, the next thing the white ant would want would be to vote. And he wouldn’t go into a polling booth alongside of an ant, to vote, Gysbert van Tonder said, even if that ant was white.

  This conversation was getting us out of our depths. The talk had taken a wrong turning, but we couldn’t make out where, exactly. Consequently, we were all pleased when Oupa Bekker spoke, and made things
seem sensible again.

  “The worst place I ever knew for white ants, in the old days,” Oupa Bekker said, “was along the Molopo, just below where it joins the Crocodile River. There was white ants for you. I was a transport rider in those days, when all the transport was still by ox-wagon. My partner was Jan Theron. We called him Jan Mankie because of his wooden leg, a back wheel of the ox-wagon having gone over his knee-cap one day when he had been drinking mampoer. Anyway, we had camped out beside the Molopo. And next morning, when we inspanned, Jan Mankie was saying how gay and light he felt. He couldn’t understand it. He even started thinking that it must be the drink again, that was this time affecting him in quite a new way. We didn’t know, of course, that it was because the white ants had hollowed out all of his wooden leg while he had lain asleep.

  “And what was still more queer was that the wagon, when he in-spanned it, also seemed surprisingly light. It didn’t strike us what the reason for that was, either, just then. Maybe we were not in a guessing frame of mind, that morning. But when our trek got through the Paradys Poort, into a stiff wind that was blowing across the vlakte, it all became very clear to us. For the sudden cloud of dust that went up was not just dust from the road. Our wagon and its load of planed Oregon pine were carried away in the finest kind of powder you can imagine, and all our oxen were left pulling was the trek-chain. And Jan Mankie Theron was standing on one leg. His other trouser leg, that was of a greyish-coloured moleskin, was flapping empty in the wind.”

  Thus, Oupa Bekker’s factual account of a straightforward Marico incident of long ago, presenting the ways and characteristics of the termite in a positive light, restored us to a sense of current realities.