The Complete Voorkamer Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  “No, that was all right,” Johnny Coen proceeded. “And there was nothing wrong, either, when you were on the table, with that leopard skin fastened round your behind. As Oupa Bekker said, it was an old table, and that one leg had been broken before, in any case.”

  Jurie Steyn said that he remembered something about that, but not much. It was all kind of cloudy.

  “And when you had the koedoe horns,” Johnny Coen said, “well, we all realised that you weren’t really able to see that there was a window there when you went butting like that with the koedoe horns.”

  Jurie Steyn turned bitter, then. And he said he just shouldn’t have gone there, that was all. It wasn’t civilised, he said, the way Oupa Bekker had got stuffed wild animals and lion skins and wild animals’ horns stuck around all over his house.

  With all those things in it, Oupa Bekker’s house was more like a wild man’s house, Jurie Steyn said.

  “It was that, all right,” At Naudé said quickly. “Last night it was, all right. But you mustn’t let it worry you too much, Jurie. It’s like what Johnny Coen said, that no good can come of a man taking it too much to heart after he’s – after he’s made a pig of himself.”

  Jurie Steyn pointed out that Johnny Coen hadn’t said all that – at least not the pig part of it. So At Naudé said that if that thought gave Jurie Steyn any kind of satisfaction, then he was glad. It wasn’t right that a white man should lose all his feelings of self-respect, At Naudé said, especially if it was a white man working in a Government department, like in a post office, for instance.

  And if it gave Jurie Steyn more confidence in himself to think that Johnny Coen hadn’t actually used the word pig, in talking about last night, then it made him very happy, At Naudé said. It wasn’t nice for a man to lose all faith in himself, no matter how low he might sink in the eyes of other people. Even though the other people were that man’s own neighbours, At Naudé added.

  That started Oupa Bekker off on a dissertation to do with white degeneracy in the Groot Marico, Oupa Bekker being able to illustrate his remarks with authentic case histories that gave the name and age and former occupation of a good number of white men who had come to lose all sense of decency and shame in the Bushveld. Among these abandoned wretches the name of one, Sass Koggel, featured prominently.

  Oupa Bekker conveyed the depth of Sass Koggel’s ultimate degradation in simple but graphic terms.

  “Sass Koggel came to live, in the end,” Oupa Bekker said, “in scum and spit.”

  There seemed to be something about the Groot Marico, Oupa Bekker declared, that made people go that way.

  Strangely enough, Oupa Bekker’s talk seemed to have just the opposite effect on Jurie Steyn from what we would have thought. Jurie Steyn appeared to be getting cheered up a good deal. Indeed, the longer Oupa Bekker’s list of depraved local white men became, the more Jurie Steyn seemed to brighten up under it. Then we learnt the reason.

  “Anyway, Oupa Bekker,” Jurie Steyn said after a while, “I know I’m low. Even before you and the rest of you kêrels here came round this afternoon and told me, I knew all that. Just from the bits that I could remember about last night, I’ve been feeling what sort of a scum of the earth I am – what sort of a low thing in human shape … What’s that you’re saying, Gysbert?”

  “I said it’s a pity you didn’t find it out sooner,” Gysbert van Tonder repeated unabashed, taking advantage of Jurie Steyn’s sudden and unexpected access of modesty.

  “Maybe,” Jurie Steyn answered, and without heat, “but it was only when Oupa Bekker started talking about other miserable wretches that have been right here, in the Marico, that I didn’t feel so bad anymore, about it. I thought, well, perhaps I am just some kind of dregs, but I’m not alone in being that. There have been others as low.

  “And quite a good part of the population, too, to judge by Oupa Bekker’s list. And if they didn’t mind being as bad and disgraceful as it is possible for any human being to get, why should I want to think I’m any better? Or why would I want Gysbert van Tonder, for instance, to think I’m any better?”

  But Gysbert van Tonder said that he didn’t think Jurie Steyn was any better than Sass Koggel. He never had thought so, Gysbert added.

  “You’ve got no idea how Oupa Bekker’s talk has relieved my mind,” Jurie Steyn went on, beginning to sound almost like himself, again. “I woke up this morning with the most terrible dronk verdriet. There didn’t seem to be any place for me in the whole world. I felt so disgusting – dragged by my feet through the mud. I felt there was no place for me anywhere among human beings.

  “And now Oupa Bekker has mentioned all those other degraded people who have lived in the Groot Marico at some time or other, and that I feel I’ve got a place with. I’m not alone. I’ve got company. That’s the thing.”

  Turning to Oupa Bekker, Jurie Steyn asked: “That Sass Koggel that you’ve been talking about, Oupa, he was a human being, at least, wasn’t he?”

  Oupa Bekker reflected earnestly.

  “Well, yes, I suppose so. Sort of,” Oupa Bekker conceded at length.

  “And so what was he was living in?” Jurie Steyn enquired. “What you said, in scum and –”

  “In scum,” Oupa Bekker stated positively, “and spit.”

  “But then, I suppose he could have got out of it, too, some time, if he wanted to?” Jurie Steyn asked.

  Oupa Bekker shook his head.

  “Not Sass,” Oupa Bekker announced in a tone of finality, “not Sass Koggel.”

  “And did he mind about it much?” Jurie Steyn asked.

  “Not,” Oupa Bekker said, “Sass.”

  So Jurie Steyn said that that was all he wanted to know. And he wasn’t going to care, either, he said, himself.

  The real thing that had worried him about last night, Jurie Steyn continued – and he had been afraid to make mention of it, even, until now – were the awful dreams he had afterwards. They were the most terrible nightmares. He doubted if even Sass Koggel, at his worst, could have had nightmares like that, after drinking mampoer.

  And he had been told that to get nightmares like that, after you had been to a party, was a sure sign that your mind was beginning to give way. But he wasn’t worrying about that at all, anymore, Jurie Steyn said.

  “As a matter of fact, one of those nightmares was even quite funny, come to think of it,” Jurie Steyn went on. “It was a nightmare about a shark. And I suppose what brought a shark into my mind was all the stuffed wild animals Oupa Bekker has got in his house. And in this nightmare it was as though I was sitting on the beach in Durban, in a café, drinking a glass of lemonade.

  “I mean, that’s funny enough, isn’t it? I mean, the idea of me drinking lemonade. And then a shark came right into the café where I was sitting, and started chewing on my leg. Now, isn’t that silly? I mean, you couldn’t imagine a thing like that happening in Durban, of all places, could you, now?”

  We all laughed, then, and said that it was absurd to think that anybody would get bitten by a shark in Durban.

  “And then, of all things,” Jurie Steyn went on, “what do you think happened next? It was as though the Mchopi chief came past – the Mchopi chief that lives at Tweefontein. Well, you know how things get all mixed up in a nightmare, don’t you? But that’s about the most mixed-up thing I can think of. The Mchopi chief coming into the tea-room in Durban. How’s that for a good one? But wait a bit, you’ve still got to hear the rest.

  “The next thing was as if the shark started chewing up the Mchopi chief’s leg, starting on his ankle, instead of chewing on my leg. And the last thing I can remember was that it was as if I was that shark. Yes, me. Now, how’s that for a pretty wild sort of a nightmare?”

  So we said, yes, it was pretty wild.

  We also said that was one of the things about last night that it would have been better for Jurie Steyn not to have known about. But now that he had mentioned it himself, we might as well tell him, we said.

  It w
as after Chris Welman had taken the leopard skin away from him, that Jurie Steyn decided he was going to be a shark, we said. And it was shortly after that that the Mchopi chief from Tweefontein came into Oupa Bekker’s voorkamer about some long-horned cattle he wanted to sell. And why the Mchopi chief got such a surprise was because he didn’t know that the party had been going on for some time.

  “But the Mchopi chief was quite all right about it afterwards,” Johnny Coen explained to Jurie Steyn. “After we had given him a beaker of mampoer to drink and some axle-grease to rub on the bitten place at the back of his leg.”

  VI

  Oom Koos Nienaber, who owned the first motor car in the Marico Bushveld, Nietverdiend. 1964

  The Terror of the Molopo

  Oupa Bekker was camped out near Renosterpoort with Japie Uys on an afternoon of long ago when a stranger who was tall and dark came riding up to them from out of the bush. That was how he met Hubrecht Willemse, Oupa Bekker said to us.

  “I didn’t know the man who dismounted there where Japie Uys and I were resting,” Oupa Bekker explained. “But I knew his horse. It was one of Koos Liebenberg’s prize stallions. I also knew the saddle. It belonged to Gert Pretorius. And the suit the stranger had on was Krisjan Steyn’s black church clothes.”

  Oupa Bekker said that he identified the suit by the mended place in the knee of the trousers from where Krisjan Steyn fell on the sidewalk in front of the Zeerust bar one Nagmaal. Why Krisjan Steyn fell was because of the half-dozen steps in front of the bar that he hadn’t noticed on account of the heat.

  “The stranger introduced himself as Hubrecht Willemse,” Oupa Bekker added, “and he said he had been round the neighbourhood a bit. Well, a good bit, he could have said, I thought, judging from his suit and horse, not to mention Gert Pretorius’s saddle.

  “Japie Uys and I looked at each other. And I was glad I wasn’t Japie. For Japie Uys was wearing a new pair of store boots that would be just about the stranger’s size.”

  Oupa Bekker said that Hubrecht Willemse came and sat down on a fallen tree-trunk beside Japie Uys and himself. Hubrecht Willemse took off his hat and fanned himself with it.

  “And I don’t know whose hat it was,” Oupa Bekker said, “although it looked so old and shapeless that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Hubrecht Willemse’s own hat.

  “But it was when we saw how short Hubrecht Willemse’s hair had been cut that Japie Uys started apologising very fast for the uncomfortable tree-stump that Hubrecht Willemse had to sit on. There was a much better trunk he knew of just down the road, Japie Uys said, and he was already half-way disappearing into a clump of withaaks after it, when Hubrecht Willemse called him back pretty sharply.

  “‘None of that,’ Hubrecht Willemse said when Japie Uys returned, looking sheepish. ‘You’re going to stay right here, both of you.’”

  Oupa Bekker said that although it was a hot afternoon, yet, sitting there in the bush next to Hubrecht Willemse on a fallen tree-trunk, he actually found himself shivering. He didn’t feel very different from a hollowed-out tree-trunk himself, Oupa Bekker said.

  Then there was a sudden, cracking sound. The white ants had been at work in the inside of that tree-trunk, and so the wood gave way in one place, with the weight of three men on it. Nevertheless, both Oupa Bekker and Japie Uys jumped.

  “When we sat down again,” Oupa Bekker proceeded, “Hubrecht Willemse said to us, ‘You know, I’m an escaped convict.’ Just like that, he said it. Of course, that information did not come as much of a surprise to Japie Uys and myself. All the same, we thought that the stranger might feel better about it if we pretended to be astonished.

  “So Japie Uys said, no, he just couldn’t believe it. It was just about the last thing he would have imagined, Japie Uys assured Hubrecht Willemse. And I said to him that I thought he looked more like an insurance agent.

  “Then remembering about a bit of unpleasantness that there had been with an insurance agent in those parts not so long ago, I said he looked more like a Senator, perhaps.”

  Oupa Bekker said that his words did not please Hubrecht Willemse as much as he thought they might.

  “But it was Hubrecht Willemse’s next remark that made me wonder if he was quite right in the head,” Oupa Bekker continued. “I started thinking that the years he had spent behind prison walls, with just rice-water and singing hymns, must have turned his mind queer. I got a chillier feeling than ever between my shoulder-blades, then, in spite of the heat.”

  For Hubrecht Willemse told Oupa Bekker that the reason why the men from the landdrost’s office would not be able to capture him was because he had the power to render himself invisible.

  “Sometimes they don’t see me at all,” Hubrecht Willemse said to Oupa Bekker. “Other times they think I’m somebody else. I’ve noticed it all the way through these parts. That’s why I am glad that I’ll be crossing the border soon.

  “Because it’s worrying me a bit, this thing. It’s a power I didn’t have before. It must be something that came to me without my knowing about it, this last time I was in prison. Maybe it was something I ate.”

  Oupa Bekker said that he thought to himself, then, that it was not so very surprising that the landdrost’s men should make mistakes about Hubrecht Willemse’s identity.

  “I thought, well, if I had seen him from not so very nearby,” Oupa Bekker said, “and I went just by the horse he was riding, then I might easily have taken him for Koos Liebenberg. Or, again, if I had seen him just walking, with the light not too good, and going by how he was dressed, then I might have thought he was Krisjan Steyn.

  “So it was not so surprising that the landdrost’s men, who did not have occasion to visit the Dwarsberg side of the Groot Marico often, should get a bit mixed up, perhaps, in looking for Hubrecht Willemse. Like if he should walk into a bar, for instance, carrying Gert Pretorius’s saddle under his arm, I also thought.”

  In the meantime, Oupa Bekker said, Japie Uys had been sitting in an absent-minded way kicking at small pieces of leiklip in front of the stump.

  “That’s not the way to treat store boots,” Hubrecht Willemse informed Japie Uys gruffly. “I can see they’re good boots – almost new, by the look of them. But they won’t look like that much longer, the way you’re going on. What did you say your name was? Swanepoel?”

  Oupa Bekker said he wondered if the stranger had been to Welgevonden, also.

  “No,” Japie Uys said, “my name is Uys. Japie Uys. But I don’t mind if you would prefer to call me by some other name. It doesn’t make any difference to me at all, really. You can just go on calling me Swanepoel, if you want.”

  “Well, look here, Uys,” Hubrecht Willemse said. “That’s not the thing to do – kicking stones around with store boots. If you want to kick stones, take your boots off, first, and kick the stones barefoot.”

  But Japie Uys said that he didn’t really want to kick stones. He was doing it just without thinking, Japie Uys said.

  Japie Uys went on to explain that why he was wearing his new boots at all, out on the veld like that, was because they were a bit tight and he wanted to walk them in. They still hurt him in a few places, he said, still.

  “Where do they hurt you?” Hubrecht Willemse demanded.

  Japie Uys said, well, in his feet, mostly.

  “Well, they couldn’t very well hurt you in your back—–, could they?” Hubrecht Willemse burst out. “What part of your feet do your boots – I mean, those boots – still pinch?”

  Japie Uys told him.

  Oupa Bekker said that what went on during the next hour or so was most inhuman to watch. The way Hubrecht Willemse made Japie Uys walk and stamp and prance around on the most uneven pieces of ground he could find, Japie Uys having to take particular care that the uppers of the boots did not get scratched by wag-’n-bietjie thorns, and Hubrecht Willemse calling Japie Potgieter, all the time.

  “Afterwards, when Hubrecht Willemse rode off, wearing Japie Uys’s boots and leaving his o
wn worn veldskoens behind,” Oupa Bekker said, “Japie Uys, with his exhaustion and sore feet, was about the most suffering-looking white man I had ever seen.

  “And the awful time he had gone through made him do quite a strange thing. For the moment Hubrecht Willemse had galloped out of sight Japie Uys rose up and took a flying kick, with his bare foot, at a piece of leiklip.”

  Japie Uys collapsed forward onto his face, then, Oupa Bekker said, and he didn’t move again until about sunset. And what Japie Uys said about Hubrecht Willemse, then, Oupa Bekker added, was most unchristian.

  It was next day, Oupa Bekker said, that he saw for himself something of that mysterious power that Hubrecht Willemse spoke about having, whereby Hubrecht Willemse could become invisible or could appear to be somebody quite different.

  “We were again sitting on that tree-stump,” Oupa Bekker said, “Japie Uys having his feet wrapped in pieces of sacking that we had in the mule-cart. And Japie Uys was talking a good deal about Hubrecht Willemse, mostly about what he would like to do to him.”

  A horseman again drew up in front of them, Oupa Bekker said, and came and joined them on the tree-stump. But this time they recognised the visitor. It was the veldkornet, who had been sent from the landdrost’s office on the escaped convict’s trail.

  “Japie Uys and I were both very glad to see the veldkornet,” Oupa Bekker said, “and the veldkornet was able to tell us a lot about Hubrecht Willemse, whom he described as a dangerous character. But we knew that much without the veldkornet telling us. ‘Whatever he wants he just takes, and he doesn’t care how,’ the veldkornet said. That, too, we knew.”

  The veldkornet went on to say that in the records of the landdrost’s office Hubrecht Willemse was known as the Terror of the Molopo.

  “What, has he been there as well?” Japie Uys said.

  “No,” the veldkornet replied, “but that’s where he’s headed for. And if he’s not going to be a holy terror there, in the Molopo, then I don’t know. But it’s outside our district, and the quicker he gets there, the better we’ll all like it, I can tell you.”