Mafeking Road

by Herman Charles Bosman

  It was moonlight. All around us was the desert. Our wagons seemed very small and lonely; there was something about them that looked very mournful. The women and children put their arms round one another and wept a long while. Our kaffirs stood some distance away and watched us. My wife Sannie put her hand in mine, and I thought of the concentration camp. Poor woman, she had suffered much. And I knew that her thoughts were the same as my own: that after all it was perhaps better that our children should have died then than now.

  We had got so far into the desert that we began telling one another that we must be near the end. Although we knew that German West was far away, and that in the way we had been travelling we had got little more than into the beginning of the Kalahari, yet we tried to tell one another lies about how near water was likely to be. But, of course, we told those lies only to one another. Each man in his own heart knew what the real truth was. And later on we even stopped telling one another lies about what a good chance we had of getting out alive. You can understand how badly things had gone with us when you know that we no longer troubled about hiding our position from the women and children. They wept, some of them. But that made no difference then. Nobody tried to comfort the women and children who cried. We knew that tears were useless, and yet somehow at that hour we felt that the weeping of the women was not less useless than the courage of the men. After a while there was no more weeping in our camp. Some of the women who lived through the dreadful things of the days that came after, and got safely back to the Transvaal, never again wept. What they had seen appeared to have hardened them. In this respect they had become as men. I think that is the saddest thing that ever happens in this world, when women pass through great suffering that makes them become as men.

  That night we hardly slept. Early the next morning the men went out to look for water. An hour after sun-up Ferreira came back and told us that he had found a muddy pool a few miles away. We all went there, but there wasn’t much water. Still, we got a little, and that made us feel better. It was only when it came to driving our cattle towards the mudhole that we found our kaffirs had deserted us during the night. After we had gone to sleep they had stolen away. Some of the weaker cattle couldn’t get up to go to the pool. So we left them. Some were trampled to death or got choked in the mud, and we had to pull them out to let the rest get to the hole. It was pitiful.

  Just before we left one of Ferreira’s daughters died. We scooped a hole in the sand and buried her.

  So we decided to trek back.

  After his daughter was dead Abraham Ferreira went up to Gerhardus and told him that if we had taken his advice earlier on and gone back, his daughter would not have died.

  “Your daughter is dead now, Abraham,” Gerhardus said. “It is no use talking about her any longer. We all have to die some day. I refused to go back earlier. I have decided to go back now.”

  Abraham Ferreira looked Gerhardus in the eyes and laughed. I shall always remember how that laughter sounded on the desert. In Abraham’s voice there was the hoarseness of the sand and thirst. His voice was cracked with what the desert had done to him; his face was lined and his lips were blackened. But there was nothing about him that spoke of grief for his daughter’s death.

  “Your daughter is still alive, Oom Gerhardus,” Abraham Ferreira said, pointing to the wagon wherein lay Gerhardus’s wife, who was weak, and the child to whom she had given birth only a few months before. “Yes, she is still alive... so far.”

  Ferreira turned away laughing, and we heard him a little later explaining to his wife in cracked tones about the joke he had made.

  Gerhardus Grobbelaar merely watched the other man walk away without saying anything. So far we had followed Gerhardus through all things, and our faith in him had been great. But now that we had decided to trek back we lost our belief in him. We lost it suddenly, too. We knew that it was best to turn back, and that to continue would mean that we would all die in the Kalahari. And yet, if Gerhardus had said we must still go on we would have done so. We would have gone through with him right to the end. But now that he as much as said he was beaten by the desert we had no more faith in Gerhardus. That is why I have said that Paul Kruger was a greater man than Gerhardus. Because Paul Kruger was that kind of man whom we still worshipped even when he decided to retreat. If it had been Paul Kruger who told us that we had to go back we would have returned with strong hearts. We would have retained exactly the same love for our leader, even if we knew that he was beaten. But from the moment that Gerhardus said we must go back we all knew that he was no longer our leader. Gerhardus knew that also.

  We knew what lay between us and Malopolole and there was grave doubt in our hearts when we turned our wagons round. Our cattle were very weak, and we had to inspan all that could walk. We hadn’t enough yokes, and therefore we cut poles from the scattered bushes and tied them to the trek-chains. As we were also without skeis we had to fasten the necks of the oxen straight on to the yokes with strops, and several of the oxen got strangled.

  Then we saw that Koos Steyn had become mad. For he refused to return. He inspanned his oxen and got ready to trek on. His wife sat silent in the wagon with the baby; wherever her husband went she would go, too. That was only right, of course. Some women kissed her goodbye, and cried. But Koos Steyn’s wife did not cry. We reasoned with Koos about it, but he said that he had made up his mind to cross the Kalahari, and he was not going to turn back just for nonsense.

  “But, man,” Gerhardus Grobbelaar said to him, “you’ve got no water to drink.”

  “I’ll drink coffee then,” Koos Steyn answered, laughing as always, and took up the whip and walked away beside the wagon. And Webber went off with him, just because Koos Steyn had been good to him, I suppose. That’s why I have said that Englishmen are queer. Webber must have known that if Koos Steyn had not actually gone wrong in the head, still what he was doing now was madness, and yet he stayed with him.

  We separated. Our wagons went slowly back to Malopolole. Koos Steyn’s wagon went deeper into the desert. My wagon went last. I looked back at the Steyns. At that moment Webber also looked round. He saw me and waved his hand. It reminded me of that day in the Boer War when that other Englishman, whose companion we had shot, also turned round and waved.

  Eventually we got back to Malopolole with two wagons and a handful of cattle. We abandoned the other wagons. Awful things happened on that desert. A number of children died. Gerhardus Grobbelaar’s wagon was in front of me. Once I saw a bundle being dropped through the side of the wagon-tent. I knew what it was. Gerhardus would not trouble to bury his dead child, and his wife lay in the tent too weak to move. So I got off the wagon and scraped a small heap of sand over the body. All I remember of the rest of the journey to Malopolole is the sun and the sand. And the thirst. Although at one time we thought that we had lost our way, yet that did not matter much to us. We were past feeling. We could neither pray nor curse, our parched tongues cleaving to the roofs of our mouths.

  Until today I am not sure how many days we were on our way back, unless I sit down and work it all out, and then I suppose I get it wrong. We got back to Malopolole and water. We said we would never go away from there again. I don’t think that even those parents who had lost children grieved about them then. They were stunned with what they had gone through. But I knew that later on it would all come back again. Then they would remember things about shallow graves in the sand, and Gerhardus Grobbelaar and his wife would think of a little bundle lying out in the Kalahari. And I knew how they would feel.

  Afterwards we fitted out a wagon with fresh oxen; we took an abundant supply of water and went back into the desert to look for the Steyn family. With the help of the Sechuana kaffirs, who could see tracks that we could not see, we found the wagon. The oxen had been outspanned; a few lay dead beside the wagon. The kaffirs pointed out to us footprints on the sand, which showed which way those two men and that woman had gone.

  In the end we found them.

 
Koos Steyn and his wife lay side by side in the sand; the woman’s head rested on the man’s shoulder; her long hair had become loosened, and blew about softly in the wind. A great deal of fine sand had drifted over their bodies. Near them the Englishman lay, face downwards. We never found the baby Jemima. She must have died somewhere along the way and Koos Steyn must have buried her. But we agreed that the Englishman Webber must have passed through terrible things; he could not even have had any understanding left as to what the Steyns had done with their baby. He probably thought, up to the moment when he died, that he was carrying the child. For, when we lifted his body, we found, still clasped in his dead and rigid arms, a few old rags and a child’s clothes.

  It seemed to us that the wind that always stirs in the Kalahari blew very quietly and softly that morning.

  Yes, the wind blew very gently.

  Splendours from Ramoutsa

  No – Oom Schalk Lourens said – no, I don’t know why it is that people always ask me to tell them stories. Even though they all know that I can tell better stories than anybody else. Much better. What I mean is, I wonder why people listen to stories. Of course, it is easy to understand why a man should ask me to tell him a story when there is drought in the Marico. Because then he can sit on the stoep and smoke his pipe and drink coffee, while I am talking, so that my story keeps him from having to go to the borehole, in the hot sun, to pump water for his cattle.

  By the earnest manner in which the farmers of the Marico ask me for stories at certain periods, I am always able to tell that there is no breeze to drive the windmill, and the pump-handle is heavy, and the water is very far down. And at such times I have often observed the look of sorrow that comes into a man’s eyes, when he knows that I am near the end of my story and that he will shortly have to reach for his hat.

  And when I have finished the story he says, “Yes, Oom Schalk. That is the way of the world. Yes, that story is very deep.”

  But I know that all the time he is really thinking of how deep the water is in the borehole.

  As I have said, it is when people have other reasons for asking me to tell them a story that I start wondering as I do now. When they ask me at those times when there is no ploughing to be done and there are no barbed-wire fences to be put up in the heat of the day. And I think that these reasons are deeper than any stories and deeper than the water in the boreholes when there is drought.

  There was young Krisjan Geel, for instance. He once listened to a story. It was foolish of him to have listened, of course, especially as I hadn’t told it to him. He had heard it from the Indian behind the counter of the shop in Ramoutsa. Krisjan Geel related this story to me, and I told him straight out that I didn’t think much of it. I said anybody could guess, right from the start, why the princess was sitting beside the well. Anybody could see that she hadn’t come there just because she was thirsty. I also said that the story was too long, and that even if I was thinking of something else I would still have told it in such a way that people would have wanted to hear it to the end. I pointed out lots of other details like that.

  Krisjan Geel said he had no doubt that I was right, but that the man who told him the story was only an Indian, after all, and that for an Indian, perhaps, it wasn’t too bad. He also said that there were quite a number of customers in the place, and that made it more difficult for the Indian to tell the story properly, because he had to stand at such an awkward angle, all the time, weighing out things with his foot on the scale.

  By his tone it sounded as though Krisjan Geel was quite sorry for the Indian.

  So I spoke to him very firmly.

  “The Indian in the store at Ramoutsa,” I said, “has told me much better stories than that before today. He once told me that there were no burnt mealies mixed with the coffee-beans he sold me. Another one that was almost as good was when he said – ”

  “And to think that the princess went and waited by the well,” Krisjan Geel interrupted me, “just because once she had seen the young man there.”

  “ – Another good one,” I insisted, “was when he said that there was no Kalahari sand in the sack of yellow sugar I bought from him.”

  “And she had only seen him once,” Krisjan Geel went on, “and she was a princess.”

  “ – And I had to give most of that sugar to the pigs,” I said, “it didn’t melt or sweeten the coffee. It just stayed like mud at the bottom of the cup.”

  “She waited by the well because she was in love with him,” Krisjan Geel ended up, lamely.

  “ – I just mixed it in with the pigs’ mealie-meal,” I said, “they ate it very fast. It’s funny how fast a pig eats.”

  Krisjan Geel didn’t say any more after that one. No doubt he realised that I wasn’t going to allow him to impress me with a story told by an Indian; and not very well told either. I could see what the Indian’s idea was. Just because I had stopped buying from his shop after that unpleasantness about the coffee-beans and the sugar – which were only burnt mealies and Kalahari sand, as I explained to a number of my neighbours – he had hit on this uncalled-for way of paying me back. He was setting up as my rival. He was also going to tell stories.

  And on account of the long start I had on him he was using all sorts of unfair methods. Like putting princesses in his stories. And palaces. And elephants that were all dressed up with yellow and red hangings and that were trained to trample on the king’s enemies at the word of command. Whereas the only kind of elephants I could talk about were those that didn’t wear red hangings or gold bangles and that didn’t worry about whether or not you were the king’s enemy: they just trampled on you first, anyhow, and without any sort of training either.

  At first I felt it was very unfair of the Indian to come along with stories like that. I couldn’t compete. And I began to think that there was much reason in what some of the speakers said at election meetings about the Indian problem.

  But when I had thought it over carefully, I knew it didn’t matter. The Indian could tell all the stories he wanted to about a princess riding around on an elephant. For there was one thing that I knew I could always do better than the Indian. Just in a few words, and without even talking about the princess, I would be able to let people know, subtly, what was in her heart. And this was more important than the palaces and the temples and the elephants with gold ornaments on their feet.

  Perhaps the Indian realised the truth of what I am saying now. At all events, after a while he stopped wasting the time of his customers with stories of emperors. In between telling them that the price of sheep-dip and axle-grease had gone up. Or perhaps his customers got tired of listening to him.

  But before that happened several of the farmers had hinted to me, in what they thought was a pleasantly amusing manner, that I would have to start putting more excitement into my stories if I wanted to keep in the fashion. They said I would have to bring in at least a king and a couple of princes, somehow, and also a string of elephants with Namaqualand diamonds in their ears.

  I said they were talking very foolishly. I pointed out that there was no sense in my trying to tell people about kings and princes and trained elephants, and so on, when I didn’t know anything about them or what they were supposed to do even.

  “They don’t need to do anything,” Frik Snyman explained, “you can just mention that there was a procession like that nearby when whatever you are talking about happened. You can just mention them quickly, Oom Schalk, and you needn’t say anything about them until you are in the middle of your next story. You can explain that the people in the procession had nothing to do with the story, because they were only passing through to some other place.”

  Of course, I said that that was nonsense. I said that if I had to keep on using that same procession over and over again, the people in it would be very travel-stained after they had passed through a number of stories. It would be a ragged and dust-laden procession.

  “And the next time you tell us about a girl going to Nagmaal in Zee
rust, Oom Schalk,” Frik Snyman went on, “you can say that two men held up a red umbrella for her and that she had jewels in her hair, and she was doing a snake-dance.”

  I knew that Frik Snyman was only speaking like that, thoughtlessly, because of things he had seen in the bioscope that had gone to his head.

  Nevertheless, I had to listen to many unreasonable remarks of this description before the Indian at Ramoutsa gave up trying to entertain his customers with empty discourse.

  The days passed, and the drought came, and the farmers of the Marico put in much of their time at the boreholes, pushing the heavy pump-handles up and down. So that the Indian’s brief period of story-telling was almost forgotten. Even Krisjan Geel came to admit that there was such a thing as overdoing these stories of magnificence.

  “All these things he says about temples, and so on,” Krisjan Geel said, “with white floors and shining red stones in them.And rajahs. Do you know what a rajah is, Oom Schalk? No, I don’t know, either. You can have too much of that. It was only that one story of his that was any good. That one about the princess. She had rich stones in her hair, and pearls sewn on to her dress. And so the young man never guessed why she had come there. He didn’t guess that she loved him. But perhaps I didn’t tell you the story properly the first time, Oom Schalk. Perhaps I should just tell it to you again. I have already told it to many people.”

  But I declined his offer hurriedly. I replied that there was no need for him to go over all that again. I said that I remembered the story very well and that if it was all the same to him I should prefer not to hear it a second time. He might just spoil it in telling it again.

  But it was only because he was young and inexperienced, I said, that he had allowed the Indian’s story to carry him away like that. I told him about other young men whom I had known at various times, in the Marico, who had formed wrong judgments about things and who had afterwards come along and told me so.