The Complete Voorkamer Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  All he would be able to say, reaching for his hat, was, “Well, I hope you won’t slop all that stuff over my register again. Last year the inspector asked if there had been pigs at it.”

  Or the schoolmaster would say, unsmilingly locking some small change away in his desk, “Very well, you can take over. I’ve counted all the rulers and exercise books in the cupboard, there.”

  It wasn’t that the schoolmaster was indifferent to the blessings that got conferred on the Groot Marico north of the Dwarsberge through these religious exercises. Indeed, when he thought of some of the church ouderlings he knew, he could only wonder where they would be, were it not for the benefits derived from divine intercession. Every schoolmaster who had ever taught in the Marico knew that church services held in the schoolroom did a lot of good.

  But the trouble is that we all have our little human vanities. And the schoolmaster likes to think that in his schoolhouse he’s a king. And so when a deacon, who is just an ordinary farmer, and with some of his children at that school, perhaps, turns up with a letter signed by somebody that’s higher than a school inspector, even, why, it stands to reason that that schoolmaster won’t feel too bucked about it. Especially if the deacon has got a kind of a sneer on his face in the act of taking over.

  But with the schoolmaster, young Vermaak, it was quite different, this year, Jurie Steyn’s brother-in-law said so himself. And Jurie Steyn’s brother-in-law was the deacon (an ouderling not being available at the moment, because of the ploughing) who had gone to young Vermaak with a letter signed by a high authority, requesting the use of the schoolhouse for the Almighty. We knew from that that the letter must have had a pretty high-up signature.

  And Jurie Steyn’s brother-in-law, the deacon, said that young Vermaak was ever so polite and friendly about it. It took away a good deal of his pleasure, at first, the deacon said. He had hoped to come into the classroom and to find the schoolmaster correcting a lot of examination papers, or filling in reports, and that the schoolmaster would have been very sarcastic about having to leave, the deacon said. He was looking forward to the schoolmaster walking out of the schoolroom in a nasty temper and asking when was he expected to do his work. And so, when the schoolmaster was, instead, helpful, he almost wished he hadn’t come along with that letter, the deacon said.

  The deacon went on to explain that he made the Mtosas that he had brought with him lift the schoolmaster’s table off the platform that it stood on, in front of the class. And young Vermaak didn’t say a word. He even went to the assistance of one of the Mtosas who, forgetting for a moment that he was on a platform, stepped backwards off the edge of it, landing with his back part in a bucket of whitewash. The schoolmaster assisted the Mtosa with his boot, the deacon said, adding that he could not have done it more neatly himself, seeing that the Mtosa was sitting in the bucket of whitewash, and therefore not leaving much space, really, for getting properly assisted.

  The schoolmaster went up a lot in his estimation, the deacon said, when he saw the quick way in which the schoolmaster helped that Mtosa to rise.

  “And then I made the Mtosas stand the platform on its edge against the wall,” the deacon added. “And they did that, one of them still limping a little from the way the schoolmaster had helped him. And then I said I would cover the platform with those sheets of black drawing paper that had pictures of mealies and maps of rivers on them. I said I would turn those drawings round and pin them onto the platform stood on its edge, and so it would look more like a preekstoel, the place where Dominee Welthagen was to stand.

  “Those drawings had been made by young Vermaak himself, and they were stuck all round the walls. And I said it just for a joke, of course, in order to make him wild. And do you know what he did? He went and fetched a little packet of drawing-pins, so as to help us with that, also.”

  We were most surprised to hear that from the deacon. We were, after all, religious people ourselves. But we knew that there were limits. And we feared that if the schoolmaster got so religious, then it must be that there was something on his mind.

  Then we remembered that we hadn’t seen young Vermaak at Jurie Steyn’s post office for quite a few months. Maybe, that was worrying him, we thought – the fact that during all that time he hadn’t come to visit us. But we also realised that, seeing it was drawing towards the end of the year, he would be too busy, setting examination papers and correcting them, and fixing things so that his favourite pupil would come first again.

  Not that we bore him any ill-will, on that account, of course. It was many years since any one of us had last been at school. And we were glad to think that we had been mellowed by the years, so that we no longer retained our childhood prejudices. We thought of a teacher’s pet only as a snivelling rat that wipes his nose on his sleeve, but we had no evil feelings about him.

  “Snelt dan, jaren, snelt vrij henen

  Met uw blijdskap en verdriet –”

  It was beautiful the way we sang the words of the next verse of Hymn 160 in the schoolroom that had been converted into a house of worship, we all of us singing together.

  This was a Reformed Church service. But that did not prevent quite a number of us, who were Doppers, from attending. Moveover, we who were Doppers were not allowed by our Enkel Gereformeerde Kerk to sing hymns; we were only permitted to sing psalms. And yet there was something about Dominee Welthagen’s Reformed Church service that night that we couldn’t resist.

  And so in the end it was actually us Doppers who, strictly speaking, were not allowed to sing a hymn, even, that showed those Reformers how a hymn should be sung. But if only Dominee Welthagen had announced a psalm, instead! If only Dominee Welthagen had said “the congregation will now sing ‘Kom laat ons zamen Israel’s Heer’” – why, you would have heard us as far as Vleisfontein, and it would have been only Dopper voices that you would have heard, and Dominee Welthagen’s own Reform congregation would have been nowhere.

  There was Jurie Steyn, there, wearing his new suit that he had bought on mail order, just sending his measurements. There was Oupa Bekker, with a collar that, if it was perhaps not quite so white, anymore, as the predikant’s, was certainly a good deal taller and stiffer. There was Gysbert van Tonder in a suit of formal cut, with a slit up the back of the jacket that was fashionable when Gysbert van Tonder first trekked into the Marico as a comparatively young man.

  At Naudé was wearing his Sunday best, also a three-piece, that, whatever its original colour, was now, except for a few undecided areas, an almost uniform green. Young Vermaak, the schoolmaster, looked dignified in navy serge. In that light you could hardly see the places where his landlady’s daughter had cleaned the jacket with paraffin.

  So much for the men in their New Year apparel.

  The women’s dresses were, mostly, new. There was consequently little that, to the male gaze, would enable one frock to be distinguished from another. With the women themselves, of course, it was different. They had a lot to whisper, behind hymnbooks, about skirt lengths and waistlines and hats – that was, if you could call a thing a hat that seemed to be a piece of cardboard with a blue handkerchief stuck on it with a brass safety pin.

  But there were other words and other images, also, that some of the women, whispering behind hymnbooks, used in describing Pauline Gerber’s hat. But afterwards they didn’t talk about her hat so much …

  “Welzalig hij, die op U bouwt,

  Geheel zijn lot aan U vertrouwt –”

  We sang at the end of the service, all of us standing up.

  And it was only after the church was out that we started talking about Pauline Gerber, whom we hadn’t seen much of since the time she had come back, so smart and all, from finishingschool . We said that she was looking as smart as ever, now, no matter what you thought of her hat. We also started saying things about young Vermaak, the schoolmaster, then. We spoke of his singular behaviour in going away straight after the service, instead of staying to talk, first to one little group and then to an
other, in the way that we all did.

  But mostly we spoke of Pauline Gerber. For by that time even the men, who were naturally not as observant in such matters as were the women, had noticed that, while Pauline Gerber’s striped frock was no doubt styled to accord with the latest fashion, there was something in the actual fit of her dress that was obedient to a much older decree. It was well that her dress hung down wide like that, we said. It also struck us that, like young Vermaak, Pauline Gerber, too, had not stayed around outside the schoolhouse, to talk.

  V

  At the Mamba Klub’s New Year’s eve dance of the Dwarsberg Boerevereniging’s Boeresport. 31 December 1965

  Go-slow Strike

  When At Naudé, who reads the newspapers, came into the post office he was wearing a wide grin.

  “Ha, ha,” he said to Jurie Steyn, who was leaning forward with his elbows on the counter. “Don’t tell me, Jurie. I know why you’re standing like that. You’re on a go-slow strike. Ha, ha.”

  Jurie Steyn gazed at At Naudé uncomprehendingly.

  “The newspapers say that it’s not an official go-slow strike,” At Naudé went on, laughing some more, “but, of course, you’ve joined it, haven’t you, Jurie? We all know you started before the others. Years before, I should say. I mean, ever since this post office has been opened here –”

  “Go-slow strike?” Jurie Steyn enquired blankly. “First I’ve heard of it. What do they want a thing like that in the post office for? Especially when I’m having all this trouble already with the new mealie-planter.”

  In a few words At Naudé acquainted Jurie Steyn with the latest news, which had to do with the go-slow strike that the post office employees were staging.

  Jurie Steyn was indignant. “Well, if that’s what the Postmaster-General wants me to start doing now, on top of everything else,” Jurie Steyn said, “then I say he can keep his job. Let the Postmaster-General come over here and look at my new mealie-planter with the green paint on it. If he still wants a go-slow strike after that I’ll tell him he can go and sit down outside and have it on his own. My wife can take him out coffee.”

  Thereupon At Naudé explained to Jurie Steyn that a go-slow strike was not an additional duty imposed on a Bushveld postmaster by the Postmaster-General. Indeed, as far as he knew, the Postmaster-General was not even in favour of the go-slow strike that the post office employees were taking part in. For that matter, he doubted if the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs himself was terrifically keen about it, At Naudé said.

  Before Jurie Steyn could take it all in, however, Gysbert van Tonder was saying that he had also bought one of those new mealie-planters. In consequence, we all started talking animatedly, several of us talking at the same time.

  More than one farmer from the far side of the Dwarsberge had purchased one of those new mealie-planters after having had it demonstrated in front of the hardware store, the demonstration consisting of the shop assistant filling the seed-hopper with mealies and the farmer pulling the mealie-planter up and down on the stoep so that he could see how it worked, the mealies falling out just the right distance from each other with the way the wheels turned; and the farmer enjoying himself.

  “Up and down, up and down I went on Policansky’s stoep,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “I promised David Policansky that I would be careful and not knock any of the new green paint off his mealie-planter. But he said just go ahead. Just make myself at home, he said. He would send somebody along later on to sweep up the mealies I had sown on his stoep, he said. I was not to worry at all.

  “Well, I went on until about midday, and by that time I was perspiring quite a lot, because that mealie-planter gets quite heavy to pull, after a while, and the stoep of the hardware store was inches deep in mealies, the way I had been sowing them.

  “And then, when it was about midday, to judge by the sun, a whistle blew somewhere – at the sawmill, I think – and Policansky came out of his store and said he thought that I could knock off now for lunch. Everybody was knocking off for lunch, now, Policansky said.”

  Chris Welman was able to confirm Gysbert van Tonder’s remarks in a considerable measure.

  “I just about laughed my head off, too,” Chris Welman said, “on Policansky’s stoep. How that mealie-planter could drop seeds at any distance you wanted – because you can adjust it, too, you know.”

  So we all said, yes, we knew you could adjust a mealie-planter. That was when the trouble started. If it didn’t start even before then, At Naudé commented, sombrely.

  “That’s just the point,” Chris Welman continued. “The mealie-planter doesn’t seem to work so well on the lands, behind a plough, going over kweekgras sods and pieces of turned-up ant-hill, as it does on the smooth stoep of Policansky’s hardware store. It doesn’t work nearly so well, I mean. With its new green paint and all, what does a mealie-planter do, as likely as not?”

  Meanwhile, Jurie Steyn had put a further question to At Naudé.

  “Are you sure you read it right, At?” Jurie asked. “What it said in the newspapers, that is? Not that I want to be unfriendly, or anything, but you know you have, before today, told us something that wasn’t so. Did it say all that about the go-slow strike? You know, you have been wrong once or twice –”

  “Once,” At Naudé admitted. “I know you’re thinking of the time when I came and told you about the money for the Kunswedstryd that got stolen, that I had read about in the Bekkersdal newspaper. But then it came out afterwards that it was a mistake the printer had made in the newspaper.”

  Several of us spoke up for At Naudé, then. Because we remembered the circumstances. And so it wasn’t At Naudé’s fault at all for having given us incorrect information. It was just what he had read, about the Kunswedstryd funds getting embezzled. But Dominee Welthagen wrote to the newspaper about it, and what Dominee Welthagen wrote was so strong, we said that even a lawyer couldn’t have done it better. And he got an answer right away from the editor. And the editor was very nice about it, the way he explained that it was all a mistake made by the printer. We all said afterwards that the editor of the newspaper couldn’t have acted more handsome than he did, how he put all the blame on the printer.

  And we said that it would be a good idea if, before he just wrote a thing, a printer went and made sure of his facts first.

  And what made the whole thing still more peculiar was that there actually wasn’t any money for the Kunswedstryd, that year.

  “Yes, that mealie-planter, green paint and all, wasn’t nearly as clever on the underneath side of my turflands,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “I’ll go so far as to say that for that kind of soil the old-fashioned way of getting a Mtosa to walk behind the plough and stick each mealie-seed in with his finger is even better. Yes, I really think that when it comes to the stickier sort of black turf, then a mealie-planter is less educated than a Mtosa.”

  We felt that was a sweeping statement. Gysbert van Tonder sensed our thoughts.

  “I know it doesn’t sound right what I’ve just said,” Gysbert continued, “but I’m only talking about turf-soil, mind. I know that a mealie-planter with its shining wheels looks much more clever than a Mtosa just arrived for work in the morning from his hut. And I won’t say that a mealie-planter hasn’t perhaps got more human feelings, also, than a Mtosa. I’m not arguing about that, see?”

  What Gysbert van Tonder insisted on, however, was that on turf-soil you had to hand it to a Mtosa for education.

  “What’s more, a Mtosa doesn’t need to paint himself all green,” Gysbert van Tonder added, as though that clinched the case. “All a Mtosa puts on himself, at a Ndlolo dance, say, is perhaps a little white and blue.”

  “But does it mean I’ve got to work slower, right here in my voorkamer?” Jurie Steyn asked of At Naudé while the rest of the conversation was going on.

  “Yes, that’s the idea,” At Naudé replied. “You’ve got to work only half as fast. It’s for more pay.”

  Jurie Steyn’s eyes gleamed.
>
  “More pay, hey?” he repeated. “Well, there’s a thing for you, now. You’d imagine you’d get less pay for working only half as fast, wouldn’t you? But I suppose it all goes to show. You got to know these things.”

  At Naudé nodded.

  “Yes, it’s no good being ignorant, like what Gysbert van Tonder says that mealie-planter is – more ignorant than a Mtosa even, Jurie,” At Naudé acknowledged. “You’ve got to know what’s going on. The newspaper I got this morning says just why those unofficial leaders of the post office workers decided to take this kind of action.”

  Jurie Steyn said that was a good one, too, if you liked.

  “Calling it action,” Jurie Steyn said. “When what they mean is less action. When they mean that I’ve got to do just half as much action, here in my voorkamer, that is. They should call it un-action, rather, I’m thinking.”

  Gysbert van Tonder’s voice sounded very loud, all of a sudden.

  “– a whole piece with no mealies at all,” Gysbert van Tonder was saying. “And then a short stretch with every single seed in the hopper planted into it. And so planted that you can’t get the mealies out again, unless you go down on your hands and knees and scrape.”

  Thereupon Chris Welman said that they should have a machine for doing that, also.

  “A machine for scraping out the seeds that have been sown in the wrong place,” Chris Welman said. “The mealie unplanter you could call it, I suppose. That would be a funny thing, now, wouldn’t it? Useful, though.”

  But Jurie Steyn said that it was no more funny than what At Naudé had just told him. It was, indeed, similar.

  Then, when the lorry-driver’s assistant came in with the mailbags, Jurie Steyn attended to him with an air of studied leisureliness. And Jurie Steyn opened only one mailbag.

  “The rest of your letters, kêrels,” he said, indicating the second mailbag, which he had placed under the counter, “I’ll let you have tomorrow. I get more pay if I do it like that.”