The Complete Voorkamer Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

Oupa Bekker was the first to mention it.

  “That’s what I always say – women,” Oupa Bekker remarked. “Now, even if you don’t agree with what a woman says or what a woman does, that’s nothing, as long as you’re polite about it, man. You’ve got to be smooth and well-bred and – and refined.

  “Now, why Jurie Steyn’s wife didn’t give you coffee was because you treated her as though she didn’t exist, at all – and just on account of her having said that thing about work. I don’t say she’s right, of course. I mean, perhaps you could do a little more work than you do: perhaps you can’t. Myself, I don’t believe that in this part of Africa a white man was meant to do much work. Otherwise he wouldn’t get pains from it here, and here – and –”

  Oupa Bekker stood up to indicate as far as he was able – his right arm being a bit stiff – the different places in his anatomy where the white man in Africa got pains through pursuing a certain operose course directed towards a specific end.

  “And what about stitch, now?” Chris Welman asked. “That’s what a white man in this part of Africa gets, too, a good deal of, from work. Mostly, I get it here, sort of.” His hand traversed a surface about a foot and a half square, on his left side. “Stitch,” Chris Welman ended up. “From kaffir work.”

  But Oupa Bekker maintained that that was not the point.

  “Why Jurie Steyn’s wife didn’t bring you any coffee …” Oupa Bekker went on, to At Naudé. “… Look, perhaps I can give you a little of my coffee. I can pour it into my saucer for you. Here, just a minute, I’ll just pour it –”

  But At Naudé said that he didn’t want any of Oupa Bekker’s coffee. Not after Oupa Bekker had already drunk on it, At Naudé said.

  This time it was Oupa Bekker’s turn to be disconcerted.

  “Well, of all the low, cheap, yellow –” words failed Oupa Bekker, then.

  At Naudé proceeded to make full use of the advantage which he had gained thus temporarily.

  “Actually, I shouldn’t have come into this, at all,” At Naudé protested. “It was Gysbert van Tonder that started this whole trouble. I didn’t say a thing, first. It was Gysbert van Tonder that said he didn’t hold with those flowers in that vase, there. He called them roses, I think. Well, that just shows how ignorant he is.

  “I only know about flowers from what Neef Marius says in his weekly talks. And Neef Marius can’t show us the flowers he’s holding in his hand: not over the wireless, he can’t. But in spite of what Oupa Bekker says about me, I’m not so unrefined that I don’t know that it’s not roses in that vase, whatever else it is –”

  “Nasturtiums,” Jurie Steyn announced. “That’s what my wife calls them.”

  “Well, all right, then,” At Naudé said. “I won’t argue. If that’s what your wife and Neef Marius say those flowers are, then that’s good enough for me. I never once said that I didn’t approve of having flowers in a vase in the voorkamer. It was Gysbert van Tonder that started all that. And then – and then Jurie Steyn’s wife goes and picks on me. Why didn’t she rather walk out back to the kitchen and forget to give Gysbert van Tonder any coffee?”

  Gysbert van Tonder raised and lowered his eyelids once or twice in what he intended to be an arch fashion. He also stroked his beard in what he wished us to regard as a knowing way.

  “Women,” Gysbert van Tonder announced, coming as near to blushing as it was possible for him. “They are funny little creatures, women. You never know where you are with them, really, do you now? I mean, women either like a man, or they don’t like him. Isn’t that so? I mean, you can’t reason with them about it. With some of us men – why, it’s like a sort of curse, almost – the way these little women take to us. Just going on nothing more than looks.”

  It just about made us feel ill, the way Gysbert van Tonder was simpering, and over nothing at all. We were glad when Chris Welman took him up pretty sharply.

  “Looks,” Chris Welman repeated sarcastically. “Anyway, that’s one way how you’re lucky, Gysbert. What you said about good looks being a curse. Well, that’s at least one way that your life isn’t blasted. I’m not talking about dishonesty and – and stealing – and things like that, now, that get a man into trouble.

  “Where you stand as far as that sort of thing goes, well, it’s not for me to judge. That’s for the police – the mounted police in uniform and the detectives in plain clothes – to make up their minds about. And it’s for the Attorney-General to say whether it is a summary trial or whether you go before the high court. But when it comes to looks, well, you can take it from me that you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  We admired the way that Chris Welman spoke. We also doubted whether Chris Welman would have known so much about legal procedure if it wasn’t that Chris Welman had a son who had been in reform school.

  More than one of us thought of that old Afrikaans maxim, then, which says that an apple doesn’t fall too far away from the tree. And we also thought, then, hearing Chris Welman talk, that an apple-tree doesn’t stand too far away from where the apple falls, either.

  But Chris Welman’s remarks took the bounce out of Gysbert van Tonder, all right. It was like an apple falling – plonk – into a stretch of wet mud, without any sort of elasticity at all.

  “What I was trying to explain about those flowers, there,” Gysbert van Tonder said, pointing an outsized forefinger with a broken nail at the bowl of nasturtiums, “is that no good can come to the Marico – the Groot Marico, that is, the part of the Marico this side of the Dwarsberge – through having our women starting growing flowers here. I’ve had the same trouble about it with my wife, before today. And it was incidentally also after she had listened in to Neef Marius talking over the wireless about being happy in your own little front garden.

  “All I was trying to say is that there is nothing wrong with flowers in their right place. Like the purple Ceylon oleander, now. That’s the only kind of flower I know. And I know it because there is no part of the Western Transvaal where I haven’t seen that flower growing in graveyards over tombstones. And that’s how I came to know the name of that flower. Because I asked. And that’s why I’ll say nothing against the purple Ceylon oleander. Because it looks very pretty, in its right place, especially if the tombstone is worn a little bit, with the years and the rains, so that you can’t read too clearly about how high-minded and full of good deeds the person was, lying under the tombstone.”

  Gysbert van Tonder went on to say, in a sentimental voice, that he desired nothing more than just that for himself, one day. He asked for nothing more than a weather-worn slab of white marble or even blue leiklip, he said, with purple Ceylon oleander clambering over it, and with just a simple inscription, giving only his Christian and surnames, and a verse from his favourite psalm, perhaps, and the dates of his birth and death, and not more than a dozen words, or so, to say how beloved he was by everybody in the Bushveld, white as well as coloured.

  That was all he asked to have put on his tombstone, some day, Gysbert van Tonder said. He wanted nothing bombastic, but just the bare essentials. He wished it to be said of him only that he was generally admired, in his lifetime, in the Groot Marico. He didn’t want any fulsome praise lavished on him after his death, because what good could that do you?

  Chris Welman stared at Gysbert van Tonder as though he was spell-bound.

  “Well, of all the –” Chris Welman started to say, and then stopped.

  That was when At Naudé got in.

  “Well, in that case it mightn’t be so bad, perhaps,” At Naudé said, “having a nice thick growth of purple oleander of Ceylon around the place. The thicker the better. So that people can’t read anything through the leaves of the oleander, even. It wouldn’t matter, then, how plain it was what you had on your tombstone, as long as you had enough oleander in front of it. And it wouldn’t matter so much about the flowers, either, as long as there’s enough stems and leaves.”

  It took Gysbert van Tonder quite a little while to understand wha
t At Naudé was getting at, and by that time the conversation had already taken quite a different turn. For Chris Welman had said that he agreed fully with what Gysbert van Tonder had been trying to say, in the first place, about flowers.

  “After all, the Groot Marico is a man’s country,” Chris Welman said. “And we’ve got no time for nonsense. This is a cattle world. The Bushveld isn’t suited even for mealies. It’s all very well saying that a Marico farmer can lay out a vegetable garden to grow carrots in, underneath his dam, like what that Neef Marius says, but who wants to eat carrots, anyway?”

  No, we agreed with Chris Welman, we none of us wanted to eat carrots. Or turnips, either, we said. Or rhubarb.

  We said straight out that this was a man’s country, and a cattle world – red Afrikander cattle, particularly – and once you started sowing vegetables you wouldn’t know where you’d be. The next thing, it would be roses, we said, and after that, after that –

  “Hollyhocks,” At Naudé helped us out, “geraniums, fuchsias, sweet-peas –”

  All that sort of thing, we said. It wasn’t that we went with Gysbert van Tonder all the way, we said, his wanting those ridiculous things about himself carved on his tombstone, and all. But we agreed that he did talk a certain amount of sense.

  “You’ll be sorry, yet, when you read all that on my tombstone,” Gysbert van Tonder interjected.

  We ignored him, however. Nor did we take much notice of Oupa Bekker when he started talking again about refinement and highly cultivated manners being qualities that appealed to women. Oupa Bekker was a nice one to talk, we thought. We would like to know just how much in the way of highly cultivated manners Oupa Bekker had, that was all.

  We recognised, however, that this new fad of flower-growing, which had of a sudden begun to captivate our womenfolk, could not do the Groot Marico much good, in the end. It would yet undermine the Marico as a man’s country and a cattle world, we felt.

  It was then that Jurie Steyn’s wife came in from the kitchen, bearing a single cup of coffee on a tray.

  “I am sorry I was so unfriendly to you, At,” Jurie Steyn’s wife said. “But you know, you looked right past me, as though I wasn’t here at all, just because I made a joke. Why can’t you be like Oupa Bekker, now? He’s always so polite.”

  Oupa Bekker smiled fatuously.

  And Gysbert van Tonder got back to where he had started from. An oversized forefinger pointed again at the offending nasturtiums in the vase.

  “Oh, that was after I had heard Neef Marius over the wireless, once or twice,” Jurie Steyn’s wife explained, “telling us women to grow flowers. Neef Marius’s voice – well, when he speaks – you don’t know how a woman feels about a voice like that. It’s like flowers.”

  “More like fruit, Neef Marius’s voice sounds like,” At Naudé commented after Jurie Steyn’s wife had gone out. “Squashy fruit.”

  Divinity Student

  “For the way you’re feeling now,” Jurie Steyn said to At Naudé, “if you want my advice, I’d say you should go somewhere where you can get away from civilisation, for a bit. Nerves, that’s what you’ve got. Why don’t you go on a fishing trip to the Molopo for a week? You know – get right away from things.”

  Chris Welman had another suggestion to make.

  “If you want my advice,” Chris Welman said to At Naudé, “you’d go and camp for a while at the Bechuanaland end of the Dwarsberge. That’s almost on the edge of the Kalahari. You’ve got no idea how desolate that part is. It’s a howling wilderness, all right.

  “You’ve got to be there only a day or two, and you’ll forget that there ever was such a thing as civilisation. You could even take Gysbert van Tonder along with you. That should help your state of mind a lot. With Gysbert around, the lower end of the Dwarsberge would look absolutely barbaric. Gysbert has got that effect even on a city, I mean.”

  Somehow, Gysbert van Tonder did not seem quite as pleased as he might have been at the subtle flattery conveyed in Chris Welman’s speech.

  “You go and –” Gysbert van Tonder started ungraciously. Then he bethought himself.

  “Ah, well,” Gysbert van Tonder ended up. “I suppose one can have too much of civilisation. And I am quite willing to believe that that is At Naudé’s trouble – his listening in to the wireless and reading the newspapers every day. His brain has got too active. But you can be glad that that is a kind of sickness that you will never suffer from, Chris Welman.”

  Gysbert van Tonder seemed very pleased with himself, the way he made that remark.

  Strangely enough, the friendly controversy in which Gysbert van Tonder and Chris Welman saw fit to indulge did not tend to allay any of the restlessness with which At Naudé’s spirit was charged.

  For At Naudé acted in what we could not help feeling was a quite singular fashion. First he half rose to his feet, emitting a long moan. Then he suddenly slumped back again into his riempies chair, at the same time smacking the open palm of his right hand in a despairing manner against his forehead. His visage was noticeably contorted.

  “All the same old childishness,” At Naudé exclaimed, “that’s supposed to be clever or that’s supposed to be funny. I can’t stand it anymore, this heavy what’s assumed to be Marico fun. If it’s not Jurie Steyn doing it, it’s Chris Welman. Or it’s Gysbert van Tonder. And if it’s not Jurie Steyn’s wife, it’s Oupa Bekker or it’s me. And if it’s not me, it’s – oh, I tell you it’s driving me mad. And when I switch on the wireless it’s the same thing. It’s either the Free State Monday Jokers or it’s the Tuesday Choir of Comical Ouderlings or it’s the Wednesday Half-Laughs with the Upington District and Schweizer-Reneke/Kaokoveld Trek-Boers.

  “And then, when I try to escape from all that, and I come here to Jurie Steyn’s post office to fetch my letters, what do I hear but somebody saying, ‘That’s a good one, ha, ha, ha’?”

  It was clear to us that At Naudé was in a bad way. Gysbert van Tonder opened his mouth to say something, but Oupa Bekker nudged him to silence. We all felt that an unreasoned remark, at that moment, could have a very adverse effect on At Naudé. And we also knew that it would be no unique thing for Gysbert van Tonder to make an unreasoned remark. It was best that At Naudé should be allowed to talk himself out, we felt.

  Some time in the future, making use of diplomatic skill, we would be able to point out to him, talking as man to man, the dangers to which he exposed himself, sitting day after day in his voorhuis alone, reading the newspapers and listening in to wireless programmes. If At Naudé went on like that much longer, he would become somebody learned before he knew where he was.

  And where would At Naudé be then, in this part of the Groot Marico, if he had learning? Just nowhere, we felt.

  “Another idea,” Gysbert van Tonder suggested, “would be for you to go and pitch a tent alongside the Crocodile River. It’s quiet enough there. At least one of the banks is quiet, the one where there isn’t much grass on. No, on second thoughts, I don’t think you should go there. Because you might just by mistake pick the wrong bank – the one that the Crocodile River gets its name from. You’d be surprised how busy things can be on that side, in the season.”

  So Oupa Bekker said that if it was civilisation that At Naudé wanted to get away from, well, there was Durban. He had been to Durban only once, Oupa Bekker said, but it was enough. It was quite a story, too, how he got to Durban, in the first place, Oupa Bekker added. But Durban was quite a good place to go to, if you were sick of civilisation.

  “The same old thing,” At Naudé remarked to Oupa Bekker. “And I know exactly what you’re going to say, too. It was in the old days. And you went there by mule-cart. Or you were a transport driver, and you went there by ox-wagon. And on the way back you gave a young student of divinity a lift as far as Kimberley.

  “And years later you saw the young student of divinity’s photograph in a newspaper. And he was a bit older then, but not much, for the years had treated him kindly. And then you realised, fo
r the first time, that the young divinity student with the handsome side-whiskers that you had given a lift to from Durban was Solly Joel. I don’t know how often I haven’t heard that kind of story.”

  When we spoke about it afterwards, we said among ourselves that the expression on At Naudé’s face was quite fiendish.

  “And if it wasn’t Solly Joel,” At Naudé continued, “it was some other Rand millionaire. And if it wasn’t a student of theology or a Sunday school superintendent – but, no, it had to be. It couldn’t be anything else. Without that, you old-timers wouldn’t think there was any point to your stories.

  “I mean, I’ve never heard of any of you transport drivers giving a lift as far as Johannesburg to an Australian doing the three-card trick. But you must have, otherwise, how could they have got there? No, it’s either Solly Joel, or Wolf Joel or Lionel Phillips or Sammy Marks – and they were doing nothing all the time but thumbing lifts on ox-wagons between Durban and the Rand.

  “When did the Rand mining magnates find time to float their companies, then? Or time to have a bath in champagne – like we know they did? I tell you, it’s more than a year, now, that I’ve been listening to every wireless programme that’s got somebody talking about life in South Africa in the old days. And you’d be surprised how many of them are transport drivers.

  “It must have been a very healthy life, I should think, driving a heavily loaded ox-wagon from the coast to the Transvaal, before there was a railway. And sometimes, when one of these old transport drivers says that what he was bringing up from Durban was a big consignment of dynamite – and the announcer starts asking him questions over the wireless – I begin to hope.

  “But it turns out, in the end, that it really was a healthy life. They had no trouble with the heavy load of dynamite to speak of.

  “But there was a religious-looking young man with handsome side-whiskers that the transport driver had given a lift to. And that young man became the chairman of a mine that ends with the word Deep. And a Johannesburg suburb is today called after him. And that whole load of dynamite, from the coast to the Rand, didn’t as much as singe the young theologian’s side-whiskers. You see, it’s not that I don’t like Oupa Bekker. My trouble is just that I’ve heard him before, and so often.