“Why you are so interested in that story,” I said, “is because you like to imagine yourself as that young man.”
Krisjan Geel agreed with me that this was the reason why the Indian’s story had appealed to him so much. And he went on to say that a young man had no chance, really, in the Marico. What with the droughts, and the cattle getting the miltsiek, and the mosquitoes buzzing around so that you couldn’t sleep at night.
And when Krisjan Geel left me I could see, very clearly, how much he envied the young man in the Indian’s story.
As I have said before, there are some strange things about stories and about people who listen to them. I thought so particularly on a hot afternoon, a few weeks later, when I saw Lettie Viljoen. The sun shone on her upturned face and on her bright yellow hair. She sat with one hand pressed in the dry grass of last summer, and I thought of what a graceful figure she was, and of how slender her wrists were.
And because Lettie Viljoen hadn’t come there riding on an elephant with orange trappings and gold bangles, and because she wasn’t wearing a string of red stones at her throat, Krisjan Geel knew, of course, that she wasn’t a princess.
And I suppose that this was the reason why, during all the time in which he was talking to her, telling her that story about the princess at the well, Krisjan Geel never guessed about Lettie Viljoen, and what it was that had brought her there, in the heat of the sun, to the borehole.
Designed by David Bullen Design
Typeset in MVBVerdigris with Nicholas Cochin Antique display
Printed by Kromar Printing Ltd. in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
The paper is 55lb hi-bulk off-set
Copyright © 1998 by The Estate of Herman Charles Bosman
First Archipelago Books Edition
All rights reserved.
No part of this book maybe reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior written permission of the publisher.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-935-74451-1
1. Marico River Region (Botswana and South Africa) – Fiction.
2. South Africa – Social life and customs--Fiction. I. Title.
PR9369.3.B6M34 2008
823 – dc22 2008001176
Archipelago Books
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This publication was made possible with support from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
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