The Complete Voorkamer Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  Similarly now, in the voorkamer, when we recalled stories of white children that had been carried off by a Bushman or a baboon or a werewolf, even, and had been brought up in the wilds and without any proper religious instruction, then we also did not think it necessary to explain where we had first heard those stories. We spoke as though we had been actually present at some stage of the affair – more usually at the last scene, where the child, now grown to manhood and needing trousers and a pair of braces and a hat, gets restored to his parents and the magistrate after studying the birth certificate says that there are things in this world that baffle the human mind.

  And while the shadows under the thorn-trees grew longer, the stories we told in Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer grew, if not longer, then, at least, taller.

  “But this isn’t the point of what I have been trying to explain,” At Naudé interrupted a story of Gysbert van Tonder’s that was getting a bit confused in parts, through Gysbert van Tonder not being quite clear as to what a werewolf was. “When I read that bit in the newspaper I started wondering how must a man feel, after he has grown up with adopted parents and he discovers, quite late in life, through seeing his birth certificate for the first time, that he isn’t white, after all. That is what I am trying to get at. Supposing Gysbert were to find out suddenly –”

  At Naudé pulled himself up short. Maybe there were one or two things about a werewolf that Gysbert van Tonder wasn’t too sure about, and he would allow himself to be corrected by Oupa Bekker on such points. But there were certain things he wouldn’t stand for.

  “All right,” At Naudé said hastily, “I don’t mean Gysbert van Tonder, specially. What I am trying to get at is, how would any one of us feel? How would any white man feel, if he has passed as white all his life, and he sees for the first time, from his birth certificate, that his grandfather was coloured? I mean, how would he feel? Think of that awful moment when he looks at the palms of his hands and he sees –”

  “He can have that awful moment,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “I’ve looked at the palm of my hand. It’s a white man’s palm. And my fingernails have also got proper half-moons.”

  At Naudé said he had never doubted that. No, there was no need for Gysbert van Tonder to come any closer and show him. He could see quite well enough just from where he was sitting. After Chris Welman had pulled Gysbert van Tonder back onto the rusbank by his jacket, counselling him not to do anything foolish, since At Naudé did not mean him, Oupa Bekker started talking about a white child in Schweizer-Reneke that had been stolen out of its cradle by a family of baboons.

  “I haven’t seen that cradle myself,” Oupa Bekker acknowledged, modestly. “But I met many people who have. After the child had been stolen, neighbours from as far as the Orange River came to look at that cradle. And when they looked at it they admired the particular way that Heilart Nortjé – that was the child’s father – had set about making his household furniture, with glued klinkpenne in the joints, and all. But the real interest about the cradle was that it was empty, proving that the child had been stolen by baboons. I remember how one neighbour, who was not on very good terms with Heilart Nortjé, went about the district saying that it could only have been baboons.

  “But it was many years before Heilart Nortjé and his wife saw their child again. By saw, I mean getting near enough to be able to talk to him and ask him how he was getting on. For he was always too quick, from the way the baboons had brought him up. At intervals Heilart Nortjé and his wife would see the tribe of baboons sitting on a rant, and their son, young Heilart, would be in the company of the baboons. And once, through his field-glasses, Heilart had been able to observe his son for quite a few moments. His son was then engaged in picking up a stone and laying hold of a scorpion that was underneath it. The speed with which his son pulled off the scorpion’s sting and proceeded to eat up the rest of the scorpion whole filled the father’s heart of Heilart Nortjé with a deep sense of pride.

  “I remember how Heilart talked about it. ‘Real intelligence,’ Heilart announced with his chest stuck out. ‘A real baboon couldn’t have done it quicker or better. I called my wife, but she was a bit too late. All she could see was him looking as pleased as anything and scratching himself. And my wife and I held hands and we smiled at each other and we asked each other, where does he get it from?’

  “But then there were times again when that tribe of baboons would leave the Schweizer-Reneke area and go deep into the Kalahari, and Heilart Nortjé and his wife would know nothing about what was happening to their son, except through reports from farmers near whose homesteads the baboons had passed. Those farmers had a lot to say about what happened to some of their sheep, not to talk of their mealies and watermelons. And Heilart would be very bitter about those farmers. Begrudging his son a few prickly-pears, he said.

  “And it wasn’t as though he hadn’t made every effort to get his son back, Heilart said, so that he could go to catechism classes, since he was almost of age to be confirmed. He had set all sorts of traps for his son, Heilart said, and he had also thought of shooting the baboons, so that it would be easier, after that, to get his son back. But there was always the danger, firing into a pack like that, of his shooting his own son.

  “The neighbour that I have spoken of before,” Oupa Bekker continued, “who was not very well-disposed towards Heilart Nortjé, said that the real reason Heilart didn’t shoot was because he didn’t always know – actually know – which was his son and which was one of the more flatheaded kees-baboons.”

  It seemed that this was going to be a very long story. Several of us started getting restive … So Johnny Coen asked Oupa Bekker, in a polite sort of way, to tell us how it all ended.

  “Well, Heilart Nortjé caught his son, afterwards,” Oupa Bekker said. “But I am not sure if Heilart was altogether pleased about it. His son was so hard to tame. And then the way he caught him. It was the simplest sort of baboon trap of all … Yes, that one. A calabash with a hole in it just big enough for you to put your hand in, empty, but that you can’t get your hand out of again when you’re clutching a fistful of mealies that was put at the bottom of the calabash. Heilart Nortjé never got over that, really. He felt it was a very shameful thing that had happened to him. The thought that his son, in whom he had taken so much pride, should have allowed himself to be caught in the simplest form of monkey-trap.”

  When Oupa Bekker paused, Jurie Steyn said that it was indeed a sad story, and was, no doubt, perfectly true. There was just a certain tone in Jurie Steyn’s voice that made Oupa Bekker continue.

  “True in every particular,” Oupa Bekker declared, nodding his head a good number of times. “The landdrost came over to see about it, too. They sent for the landdrost so that he could make a report about it. I was there, that afternoon, in Heilart Nortjé’s voorkamer, when the landdrost came. And there were a good number of other people, also. And Heilart Nortjé’s son, half-tamed in some ways but still baboon-wild in others, was there also. The landdrost studied the birth certificate very carefully. Then the landdrost said that what he had just been present at surpassed ordinary human understanding. And the landdrost took off his hat in a very solemn fashion.

  “We all felt very embarrassed when Heilart Nortjé’s son grabbed the hat out of the landdrost’s hand and started biting pieces out of the crown.”

  When Oupa Bekker said those words it seemed to us like the end of a story. Consequently, we were disappointed when At Naudé started making further mention of that piece of news he had read in the daily paper. So there was nothing else for it but that we had to talk about Flippus Biljon. For Flippus Biljon’s case was just the opposite of the case of the man that At Naudé’s newspaper wrote about.

  Because he had been adopted by a coloured family, Flippus Biljon had always regarded himself as a coloured man. And then one day, quite by accident, Flippus Biljon saw his birth certificate. And from that birth certificate it was clear that Flippus Biljon was as white as you or I. You can i
magine how Flippus Biljon must have felt about it. Especially after he had gone to see the magistrate at Bekkersdal, and the magistrate, after studying the birth certificate, confirmed the fact that Flippus Biljon was a white man.

  “Thank you, baas,” Flippus Biljon said. “Thank you very much, my basie.”

  Play within a Play

  “But what did Jacques le Français want to put a thing like that on for?” Gysbert van Tonder asked.

  In those words he conveyed something of what we all felt about the latest play with which the famous Afrikaans actor, Jacques le Français, was touring the platteland. A good number of us had gone over to Bekkersdal to attend the play. But – as always happens in such cases – those who hadn’t actually seen the play knew just as much about it as those who had. More, even, sometimes.

  “What I can’t understand is how the kerkraad allowed Jacques le Français to hire the church hall for a show like that,” Chris Welman said. “Especially when you think that the church hall is little more than a stone’s throw from the church itself.”

  Naturally, Jurie Steyn could not let that statement pass. Criticism of the church council implied also a certain measure of fault-finding with Deacon Kirstein, who was a first cousin of Jurie’s wife.

  “You can hardly call it a stone’s throw,” Jurie Steyn declared. “After all, the plein is on two morgen of ground and the church hall is at the furthest end from the church itself. And there is also a row of bluegums in between. Tall, well-grown bluegums. No, you can hardly call all that a stone’s throw, Chris.”

  So At Naudé said that what had no doubt happened was that Jacques le Français with his insinuating play-actor ways had got round the members of the kerkraad, somehow. With lies, as likely as not. Maybe he had told the deacons and elders that he was going to put on that play Ander Man se Kind again, which everybody approved of, seeing it was so instructive, the relentless way in which it showed up the sinful life led in the great city of Johannesburg and in which the girl in the play, Baba Haasbroek, got ensnared, because she was young and from the backveld, and didn’t know any better.

  “Although I don’t know if that play did any good, really,” At Naudé added, thoughtfully. “I mean, it was shortly after that that Drieka Basson of Enzelsberg left for Johannesburg, wasn’t it? Perhaps the play Ander Man se Kind was a bit too – well – relentless.”

  Thereupon Johnny Coen took a hand in the conversation.

  It seemed very long ago, the time Johnny Coen had gone to Johannesburg because of a girl that was alone there in that great city. And on his return to the Marico he had not spoken much of his visit, beyond mentioning that there were two men carved in stone holding up the doorway of a building near the station and that the pavements were so crowded that you could hardly walk on them. But for a good while after that he had looked more lonely in Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer than any stranger could look in a great city.

  “I don’t know if you can say that that play of Jacques le Français’s about the girl that went to Johannesburg really is so very instructive,” Johnny Coen said. “There were certain things in it that are very true, of course. But there are also true things that could never go into one of Jacques le Français’s plays – or into any play, I think.”

  Gysbert van Tonder started to laugh, then. It was a short sort of laugh.

  “I remember what you said when you came back from Johannesburg, that time,” Gysbert van Tonder said to Johnny Coen. “You said the pavements were so crowded that there was hardly room to walk. Well, in the play, Ander Man se Kind, it wasn’t like that. The girl in the play, Baba Haasbroek, didn’t seem to have trouble to walk about on the pavement, I mean, half the time, in the play, she was walking on the pavement. Or if she wasn’t walking she was standing under a street-lamp.”

  It was then that At Naudé mentioned the girl in the new play that Jacques le Français had put on at Bekkersdal. Her name was Truida Ziemers. It was a made-up name, of course, At Naudé said. Just like Jacques le Français was a made-up name. His real name was Poggenpoel, or something. But how any Afrikaans writer could write a thing like that …

  “It wasn’t written by an Afrikaans dramatist,” young Vermaak, the schoolteacher, explained. “It is a translation from –”

  “To think that any Afrikaner should fall so low as to translate a thing like that, then,” Gysbert van Tonder interrupted him. “And what’s more, Jacques le Français or Jacobus Poggenpoel, or whatever his name is, is coloured. I could see he was coloured. No matter how he tried to make himself up, and all, to look white, it was a coloured man walking about there on the stage. How I didn’t notice it in the play Ander Man se Kind I don’t know. Maybe I sat too near the back, that time.”

  Young Vermaak did not know, of course, to what extent we were pulling his leg. He shook his head sadly. Then he started to explain, in a patient sort of way, that Jacques le Français was actually playing the role of a coloured man. He wasn’t supposed to be white. It was an import-ant part of the unfolding of the drama that Jacques le Français wasn’t a white man. It told you all that in the title of the play, the schoolmaster said.

  “What’s he then, a Frenchman?” Jurie Steyn asked. “Why didn’t they say so, straight out?”

  Several of us said after that, each in turn, that there was something you couldn’t understand, now. That a pretty girl like Truida Ziemers, with a blue flower in her hat, should fall in love with a coloured man, and even marry him. Because that was what happened in the play.

  “And it wasn’t as though she didn’t know,” Chris Welman remarked. “Meneer Vermaak has just told us that it says it in the title of the play, and all. Of course, I didn’t see the play myself. I meant to go, but at the last moment one of my mules took sick. But I saw Truida Ziemers on the stage, once. And even now, as I am talking about her again, I can remember how pretty she was. And to think that she went and married a coloured man when all the time she knew. And it wasn’t as though he could tell her that it was just sunburn, seeing that she could read it for herself on the posters. If the schoolmaster could read it, so could Truida.”

  Anyway, that was only to be expected, Gysbert van Tonder said. That Jacques le Français would murder Truida Ziemers in the end, he meant. After all, what else could you expect from a marriage like that? Maybe from that point of view the play could be taken as a warning to every respectable white girl in the country.

  “But that isn’t the point of the play,” young Vermaak insisted, once more. “Actually it is a good play. And it is a play with real educational value. But not that kind of educational value. If I tell you that this play is a translation – and a pretty poor translation too: I wouldn’t be surprised if Jacques le Français translated it himself – of the work of the great –”

  This time the interruption came from Johnny Coen.

  “It’s all very well talking like they have been doing about a girl going wrong,” Johnny Coen said. “But a great deal depends on circumstances. That is something I have learnt, now. Take the case now of a girl that …”

  We all sat up to listen, then. And Gysbert van Tonder nudged Chris Welman in the ribs for coughing. We did not wish to miss a word.

  “A girl that …?” At Naudé repeated in a tone of deep understanding, to encourage Johnny Coen to continue.

  “Well, take a girl like that girl Baba Haasbroek in the play Ander Man se Kind,” Johnny Coen said. Jurie Steyn groaned. We didn’t want to hear all that over again.

  “Well, anyway, if that girl did go wrong,” Johnny Coen proceeded – pretty diffidently, now, as though he could sense our feelings of being balked – “then there might be reasons for it. Reasons that didn’t come out in the play, maybe. And reasons that we sitting here in Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer would perhaps not have the right to judge about, either.”

  Gysbert van Tonder started clearing his throat as though for another short laugh. But he seemed to change his mind halfway through.

  “And in this last play, now,” Johnny Coen a
dded, “if Jacques le Français had really loved the girl, he wouldn’t have been so jealous.”

  “Yes, it’s a pity that Truida Ziemers got murdered in the end, like that,” At Naudé remarked. “Her friends in the play should have seen what Jacques le Français was up to, and have put the police onto him, in time.”

  He said that with a wink, to draw young Vermaak, of course.

  Thereupon the schoolmaster explained with much seriousness that such an ending would defeat the whole purpose of the drama. But by that time we had lost all interest in the subject. And when the Government lorry came soon afterwards and blew a lot of dust in at the door we made haste to collect our letters and milk-cans.

  Consequently, nobody took much notice of what young Vermaak went on to tell us about the man who wrote the play. Not the man who translated it into Afrikaans but the man who wrote it in the first place. He was a writer who used to hold horses’ heads in front of a theatre, the schoolmaster said, and when he died he left his second-best bed to his wife, or something.

  Springtime in Marico

  “It will soon be spring,” Gysbert van Tonder observed, looking out of the door of Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer to where the bush began.

  “I don’t know what spring is,” Jurie Steyn replied, gruffly. “But if you mean that it’s near the end of the winter, well, there I suppose you are right. You have not got such a thing as what you could call the springtime in the Groot Marico. All you get here is the end of the winter. Now, that’s where the Cape is different.”