The Complete Voorkamer Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  Casual Conversation

  “It’s again the season,” Jurie Steyn announced, “when travellers with black spectacles and mosquito nets and white helmets swarm to these parts. Tourists, they call themselves.”

  He himself wouldn’t go so far as to say swarm exactly, Chris Welman replied. It wasn’t quite as bad as all that. Not that tourists might not become a bit of a nuisance, in time, Chris Welman added, if the authorities did not start exercising some sort of control.

  But At Naudé said that that was just what those tourists would like, and what they could never get enough of. In fact, the surest way of having the whole of the Marico overrun with tourists, would be through making it hard for them to get here, At Naudé said.

  There was that party of tourists of a couple of years back, At Naudé went on, that he came across on the other side of the Dwarsberge. It was his first tourists of the year. He spotted them through his field-glasses when he had gone onto a koppie to look for a strayed mule. And he couldn’t see them too well, either, through all their mosquito netting.

  “Anyway, I would have thought nothing more of it,” At Naudé said. “I would just have gone back home, and I would have told my wife that I had seen my first tourists of the year, in the same way that, the week before, I had seen my first pair of yellow-tailed tinktinkies. They had grey spots on their bellies. That is, the tinktinkies had. I couldn’t see the tourists as well as all that, of course, because of what I have told you about the mosquito nets. And they were making queer twittering sounds, and they were hopping. The tourists were, I mean. I wasn’t near enough to the tinktinkies to make out what kind of sounds, if any, they were letting out.”

  He was just on the point of turning his field-glasses in the other direction, towards the kloof, At Naudé said, when something caught his attention. He had thought nothing of the way the tourists were jumping about and uttering strange cries, At Naudé explained, since he had grown to accept the fact that tourists were not quite human, so that nothing they did ever came as a surprise to you, much. Thereupon we all said no, of course, there was nothing in what a tourist did that could awaken any sort of real interest, anymore. Even the most ignorant kind of Kalahari Bushman had by that time come to recognise a tourist for what he was. And it was many years since even a Koranna from the reserve had last raised an eyebrow at a tourist’s foolishness.

  It was just because he was well bred, At Naudé went on to say, that he started to take the field-glasses away from his eyes and to turn the screw in the middle so that he could focus on the kloof instead. But what he observed at that moment was of so extraordinary a character that he had to polish his field-glasses on his shirt-sleeve to make sure that there wasn’t a mistake, somewhere.

  “It wasn’t that I mistrusted those field-glasses,” At Naudé said. “But it was just something I couldn’t believe, somehow. I mean those field-glasses – why, my uncle, Stefaans Welgemoed, used them right through the Boer War. And that was why he was never caught and sent to St. Helena. Through those field-glasses you could see an Englishman with a red neck and a Lee-Metford quicker than through any telescope anywhere in the world, my Uncle Stefaans always used to say.”

  It was reasonable to expect from At Naudé a plainer statement about those tourists he had seen behind the Dwarsberge. We felt that we could not just leave them there all afternoon, jumping and making noises. So Chris Welman broached the subject, and with true Bushveld straightforwardness – which is perhaps not quite the same thing as the ordinary sort of candour. After all, where would you be, if wherever you go you just say straight out what you think or what you mean, even? After all, everybody in the Marico Bushveld prides himself on his bluff frankness of speech, and all that, but that doesn’t imply that you’ve got to be a simpleton. Consequently, because he wanted to know more from At Naudé about those tourists, Chris Welman put the question to him in a way that At Naudé would understand. Chris Welman started talking some more about those field-glasses; and he said that we all knew that those field-glasses had been in the Naudé family for many generations; and that some very strange sights must on occasion have been presented to the view of the persons who had looked through those field-glasses down the years.

  That was blunt talk, all right, if you liked. But then we knew that Chris Welman always was like that. No subterfuge about his words. No fancy frills. He was inquisitive about the antics of those tourists, and so he asked At Naudé about them straight out.

  “Yes,” At Naudé said, beginning to sound sentimental, almost, over those field-glasses. “Yes, some pretty funny sights, I should think, down the years. Maybe, the Huguenots landing, also. You know, French. Like old Pollyvoo at the Derdepoort mission station, jumping about and waving his arms, all the time. I suppose that’s how the Huguenots looked, landing at the Cape … waving their arms and jumping and calling out pollyvoo to each other. Yes, it must have been very funny. I don’t suppose they could talk a word of Afrikaans, either.”

  Young Vermaak, the schoolmaster, was able to help At Naudé right, then. He explained that the Huguenots were French communities of the seventeenth century and that why they came to the Cape had to do with Henry of Navarre and the Edict of Nantes. It also had quite a lot to do with the Massacre of Bartholomew’s Eve, the schoolmaster said. That made the Huguenots decide to go and start the cultivation of the grapevine at the Cape. Although if it hadn’t been for St. Bartholomew’s, the schoolmaster said, there might possibly have been more passengers aboard that ship that docked at Table Bay. The schoolmaster also said that you could tell by his name that At Naudé was himself a descendant of the Huguenots. So At Naudé needn’t talk.

  The schoolmaster sighed a little also when he said that. It was as though he sorrowed at At Naudé’s ignorance, and at At’s presence in the voorkamer. It was almost as though the schoolmaster regretted the fact that the St. Bartholomew affair had not been better organised.

  After that we discussed other groups – and individuals, also – that had been seen through At Naudé’s field-glasses. Zulu impis, we said. And Piet Retief. And Napoleon, we said. And Dr Philip, the schoolmaster said.

  “And Oupa Bekker,” Jurie Steyn said, with a laugh. “More than once in the old days, somebody must have looked through those same field-glasses and seen Oupa Bekker come riding over the hill, with his long beard and all.”

  All this talk would have got us nowhere, if it wasn’t for Johnny Coen.

  “I know why you spoke like that about the Huguenots,” Johnny Coen said to At Naudé. “About their jumping around and waving their arms. It’s because you were thinking about those tourists behind the Dwarsberge. Forget all about your field-glasses. Why were those tourists acting in that way?”

  But when At Naudé told us, it sounded so tame that we would rather not have heard the explanation. At Naudé reminded us that he had been out looking for his mule that had strayed. Well, it appeared that his mule had wandered down to the tourist camp. And because the tourists didn’t know how a mule thinks they had tried to drive it away. As a result, the mule walked right up into their camp and started eating their mosquito netting as quick as he could get it down, which was quite a large number of square yards a minute. And why the tourists were making those twittering sounds was because they were barefooted and, in trying to chase the mule, they had landed in a patch of last season’s dubbeltjie thorns.

  “But why I said that it’s no use making it hard for tourists if you want to keep them out of the Marico,” At Naudé explained, “is this. After my mule had wandered off into the bush, there not being any more mosquito netting around for him to eat, as far as he could see, I talked to one of the tourists. And he said he had been an explorer in Tibet. And he said Tibet was averse to Western incursions. Just like that, he said it. And he was very happy about it. He had a very happy time there, he said, and he stole two prayer-wheels. Tibet was called the Forbidden Country, and so it was a pleasure for him to visit it, he said. And for that reason he was disappointed in the
Marico.”

  What At Naudé told us, then, took a little while to sink in. There was a fairly long silence, during which we all thought pretty hard.

  Jurie Steyn was the first to speak. And the words he spoke expressed all our feelings.

  “Just let him wait a bit,” Jurie Steyn said, “that’s all.”

  The Call of the Road

  The latest news that At Naudé had to communicate to us in Jurie Steyn’ s voorkamer was about the mayor of a highveld dorp who walked a long distance to Pretoria in order to interview a Minister about the housing shortage.

  “It was as a protest,” At Naudé explained, “that he set off on foot across the whole length of the Southern Transvaal, sleeping at night in the straw with a tramp who didn’t have an overcoat, but only a bottle of vaaljapie wine.”

  Gysbert van Tonder said, then, that on a cold night, when you were sleeping in the straw, a bottle of vaaljapie could be of more use to you than an overcoat. As long as there was enough straw, Gysbert added. And enough vaaljapie.

  At Naudé went on to say that the mayor had a hot flask of coffee, there in the straw, which the tramp did not wish to share with him. He never drank coffee, the tramp said.

  Thereupon Johnny Coen said that he could just imagine what sort of a tramp that was – giving himself airs, and all the rest of it. He knew that sort of tramp, Johnny Coen said, since he had once been on the road himself. You came across some quite insufferable tramps, at times, Johnny Coen went on. He knew about them from his own experience – dating from the time when he himself had just suddenly felt full up to the neck with his job at the Ottoshoop siding, and had set off on foot along the road leading to the big cities of South Africa, having drawn his pay first.

  “The kind of tramp that sneers at you because you forgot to tie pieces of newspaper to the bottom parts of your trousers before you left home,” Johnny Coen declared, bitterly. “I know that sort. And I can imagine how that tramp in the straw must have sneered when the mayor pulled a hot flask of coffee out of his pocket. When the only proper pocket that the tramp had left had got its lining fastened with a safety pin, so that the bottle of vaaljapie wouldn’t drop out before the tramp got into the straw. I suppose that tramp laughed outright. Right in the mayor’s face, I should imagine. And yet what brought me back to Ottoshoop, after I had run away, was also no more than a hot flask. When I had set off down the road to the south, I had left my hot flask in the wood-and-iron lean-to that the Public Works Department had erected for us workmen next to the Ottoshoop siding. And the farther I went along the road from Ottoshoop, the more I missed the hot flask, that I used to take coffee in to work. And I was too proud to turn back for that hot flask, if you’ll understand what I mean. But in the end I overcame my pride, and I went back. And so I know just how the highveld mayor must have felt, when the tramp in the straw regarded his hot flask as … well … You see, it’s not what a tramp says, that’s important. It’s the way his lip curls, without his having to use any words.”

  Because Johnny Coen was young, we did not feel called upon to take much notice of anything he said. We were much more interested in Gysbert van Tonder’s next remark.

  “To tell you the truth,” Gysbert said, “I am not surprised at that mayor just taking it into his head to pack his things and walk off. I have lived in more than one highveld dorp myself. And I know what sort of things go on there. That’s why I don’t blame that mayor in the least. Just think what it’s like to wake up in the morning and to look at the sunrise, and there’s no mdubu trees or withaaks or maroelas. There’s just a piece of flat veld starting right at your kitchen door, and it has rained, and you’ve got to start ploughing. I can quite understand a person living on the highveld putting a piece of biltong and a spare shirt into a suitcase and walking away from there, then. I mean, isn’t that how quite a few of us landed here, in the Marico? And without a spare shirt, either, in some cases – in some cases that I wouldn’t like to mention here in this voorkamer, I mean.”

  Naturally, we each of us, after that, felt it was necessary to make it clear that when we arrived in the Marico it was with more than a spare shirt in our suitcases. It was funny, and all that, what Gysbert van Tonder had said, but we weren’t tramps, exactly, when we came to the Marico the first time it was thrown open to white settlement. Still, it was a good joke Gysbert van Tonder had made, we said – ha, ha.

  “Who has ever heard of a tramp coming into a place with a harmonium fastened onto the middle of his wagon, just above the bok, with ox-riems?” Jurie Steyn asked. “I don’t say that the top notes of the harmonium vibrated as well as you would like, perhaps. But, of course, that was just because of the way that the wagon got bumped during the long journey through the Roggeveld. Still, I helped to civilise these parts with my harmonium, all right, I think.”

  In reply, Chris Welman said that it all depended, of course, on what you meant by civilised. He had had somewhat different thoughts himself, he confessed, on that Sunday morning when the strains of a hymn tune came floating over the vlaktes, for the first time.

  “It wasn’t only the top notes,” Chris Welman explained. “But I could tell by the bottom notes, also, that the harmonium had trekked through some of the worst parts of the Roggeveld. I kept saying to myself that it was a pity you hadn’t taken a bit of a detour.”

  “Well, I know that I didn’t come to the Marico with just a shirt on my back,” At Naudé said. “I had at least several shirts. And also my Nagmaal suit. And I have still got my Nagmaal suit. What’s more, I can still wear it. I was already fat when I came to the Groot Marico. I didn’t come to the Marico like a starved person that only starts getting fat after he has been here for some time. I came to the Marico fat.”

  After we had all explained that we were none of us tramps, or anywhere near like some people we knew – when we first came to live in the lowveld, it was by way of a relief when At Naudé made it clear that the mayor did not walk away from that highveld dorp because he had had enough of it, but to let the Minister know that there weren’t enough houses to go round, in the dorp where he was.

  So we said, couldn’t he rather have gone by train?

  “Or what’s wrong with him writing a letter?” Jurie Steyn asked, the while his eye travelled the length of his counter, with the shiny brass scales and rubber stamps on it. “Or haven’t they got a reliable post office there?”

  But At Naudé said, no, the matter was too urgent. And when Jurie Steyn opened his mouth to say something, we all laughed.

  That gave Johnny Coen his chance to tell us about the time when he himself took to the road.

  “It was the Foreman,” Johnny Coen said. “The Siding Foreman. Now, it doesn’t matter how bad a Third Class Running Staff Station Foreman can get, he’s nothing at all next to a Siding Foreman. And so, after I had been working at Ottoshoop quite a while I suddenly found I couldn’t stand it any longer. The Siding Foreman had been a farmer at Rysmierbult before he went to the railways, and, as you know, there’s nobody can be as inhuman to you as your own sort.”

  That statement of Johnny Coen’s awakened quite a lot of memories in the consciousness of each of us, and we all nodded our agreement. Indeed, the vigour with which Gysbert van Tonder inclined his head forward was so noticeable that Jurie Steyn, who was his neighbour, took it as a personal affront. We managed to stop the argument, however, before anything really unseemly happened.

  “And so, when I saw that road there, winding away to the south, through the hills,” Johnny Coen proceeded, “I just walked away, out of the lean-to. I didn’t hand in my notice or say goodbye to the Siding Foreman, or anything. I saw only the open road, winding away amongst the hills, and I started walking. Since then, of course, I have learnt that it was wrong of me to have acted like that – running away because I found things were too hard, and being so unfriendly, as well. I am sure that the mayor that At Naudé spoke about didn’t act like that. I am sure that the mayor at least went and said goodbye to the Siding For
eman, no matter what he might have thought of him privately.”

  Johnny Coen went on to relate to us the details of some of his adventures along the road. Mostly, his stories were of encounters with tramps, who, lying in a farmer’s loft and wrapped around in the best straw, were so superior that they would hardly talk to him.

  “But what brought me back, in the end, was my hot flask, that I had left behind in the lean-to,” Johnny Coen said. “My hot flask had gold and green bands painted all round it, and I could picture the Siding Foreman drinking coffee out of it, and enjoying it. And wiping his beard, afterwards.”

  He slipped into the lean-to at an hour in the morning when he expected the Siding Foreman to be off duty.

  “So you can imagine how surprised I was, when I turned round to see the Siding Foreman behind me,” Johnny Coen added. “And he said he knew I would come back. He had once run away from a job, too, when he was my age. And he could tell that I was a lot like he was, and that I wasn’t the tramp sort. And as he walked out the Siding Foreman said that I was half an hour late for work. And before I knew what I was doing, I was taking off my hat and jacket, there in the lean-to.”

  Lath and Plaster

  They were going to do it right here, in South Africa, At Naudé declared, retailing to us what he had read in the newspapers.

  It was called a sound-track, At Naudé said, meaning that part of a film which makes the glug-glug noises when an ocean liner goes down after having struck an iceberg, in a bioscope.

  So we said that, while we did not know that it was called a sound-track, we were all of us familiar with that part of a movie picture that At Naudé was talking about. We were surprised that it had a name at all, we said. It seemed to us too wild a thing to be actually called by a name, we said.

  We each of us then started remembering, from occasional visits to the bioscope in Bekkersdal, various bits of sound-track, now that At Naudé had given us the word for it.