Then one day Manie Kruger read an article in the Kerkbode about a musician who said that he knew more about music than Napoleon did. After that – having first read another article to find out who Napoleon was – Manie Kruger was a changed man. He could talk of nothing but his place in history and of his musical career.
Of course, everybody knew that no man in the Marico could be counted in the same class with Manie Kruger when it came to playing the concertina.
No Bushveld dance was complete without Manie Kruger’s concertina. When he played a vastrap you couldn’t keep your feet still. But after he had decided to become the sort of musician that gets into history books, it was strange the way that Manie Kruger altered. For one thing, he said he would never again play at a dance. We all felt sad about that. It was not easy to think of the Bushveld dances of the future. There would be the peach brandy in the kitchen; in the voorkamer the feet of the dancers would go through the steps of the schottische and the polka and the waltz and the mazurka, but on the riempies bench in the corner, where the musicians sat, there would be no Manie Kruger. And they would play “Die Vaal Hare en die Blou Oge” and “Vat Jou Goed en Trek, Ferreira,” but it would be another’s fingers that swept over the concertina keys. And when, with the dancing and the peach brandy, the young men called out “Dagbreek toe!” it would not be Manie Kruger’s head that bowed down to the applause.
It was sad to think about all this.
For so long, at the Bushveld dances, Manie Kruger had been the chief musician.
And of all those who mourned this change that had come over Manie, we could see that there was no one more grieved than Letta Steyn.
And Manie said such queer things at times. Once he said that what he had to do to get into history was to die of consumption in the arms of a princess, like another musician he had read about. Only it was hard to get consumption in the Marico, because the climate was so healthy.
Although Manie stopped playing his concertina at dances, he played a great deal in another way. He started giving what he called recitals. I went to several of them. They were very impressive.
At the first recital I went to, I found that the front part of Manie’s voorkamer was taken up by rows of benches and chairs that he had borrowed from those of his neighbours who didn’t mind having to eat their meals on candle-boxes and upturned buckets. At the far end of the voorkamer a wide green curtain was hung on a piece of string. When I came in the place was full. I managed to squeeze in on a bench between Jan Terreblanche and a young woman in a blue kappie. Jan Terreblanche had been trying to hold this young woman’s hand.
Manie Kruger was sitting behind the green curtain. He was already there when I came in. I knew it was Manie by his veldskoens, which were sticking out from underneath the curtain. Letta Steyn sat in front of me. Now and again, when she turned round, I saw that there was a flush on her face and a look of dark excitement in her eyes.
At last everything was ready, and Joel, the farm kaffir to whom Manie had given this job, slowly drew the green curtain aside. A few of the younger men called out “Middag, ou Manie,” and Jan Terreblanche asked if it wasn’t very close and suffocating, sitting there like that behind that piece of green curtain.
Then he started to play.
And we all knew that it was the most wonderful concertina music we had ever listened to. It was Manie Kruger at his best. He had practised a long time for that recital; his fingers flew over the keys; the notes of the concertina swept into our hearts; the music of Manie Kruger lifted us right out of that voorkamer into a strange and rich and dazzling world.
It was fine.
The applause right through was terrific. At the end of each piece the kaffir closed the curtains in front of Manie, and we sat waiting for a few minutes until the curtains were drawn aside again. But after that first time there was no more laughter about this procedure. The recital lasted for about an hour and a half, and the applause at the end was even greater than at the start. And during those ninety minutes Manie left his seat only once. That was when there was some trouble with the curtain and he got up to kick the kaffir.
At the end of the recital Manie did not come forward and shake hands with us, as we had expected. Instead, he slipped through behind the green curtain into the kitchen, and sent word that we could come and see him round the back. At first we thought this a bit queer, but Letta Steyn said it was all right. She explained that in other countries the great musicians and stage performers all received their admirers at the back. Jan Terreblanche said that if these actors used their kitchens for entertaining their visitors in, he wondered where they did their cooking.
Nevertheless, most of us went round to the kitchen, and we had a good time congratulating Manie Kruger and shaking hands with him; and Manie spoke much of his musical future, and of the triumphs that would come to him in the great cities of the world, when he would stand before the curtain and bow to the applause.
Manie gave a number of other recitals after that. They were all equally fine. Only, as he had to practise all day, he couldn’t pay much attention to his farming. The result was that his farm went to pieces and he got into debt. The court messengers came and attached half his cattle while he was busy practising for his fourth recital. And he was practising for his seventh recital when they took away his ox-wagon and mule-cart.
Eventually, when Manie Kruger’s musical career reached that stage when they took away his plough and the last of his oxen, he sold up what remained of his possessions and left the Bushveld, on his way to those great cities that he had so often talked about. It was very grand, the send-off that the Marico gave him. The predikant and the Volksraad member both made speeches about how proud the Transvaal was of her great son. Then Manie replied. Instead of thanking his audience, however, he started abusing us left and right, calling us a mob of hooligans and soulless Philistines, and saying how much he despised us.
Naturally, we were very much surprised at this outburst, as we had always been kind to Manie Kruger and had encouraged him all we could. But Letta Steyn explained that Manie didn’t really mean the things he said. She said it was just that every great artist was expected to talk in that way about the place he came from.
So we knew it was all right, and the more offensive the things were that Manie said about us, the louder we shouted “Hoor, hoor vir Manie.” There was a particularly enthusiastic round of applause when he said that we knew as much about art as a boomslang. His language was hotter than anything I had ever heard – except once. And that was when De Wet said what he thought of Cronje’s surrender to the English at Paardeberg. We could feel that Manie’s speech was the real thing. We cheered ourselves hoarse, that day.
And so Manie Kruger went. We received one letter to say that he had reached Pretoria. But after that we heard no more from him.
Yet always, when Letta Steyn spoke of Manie, it was as a child speaks of a dream, half wistfully, and always, with the voice of a wistful child, she would tell me how one day, one day he would return. And often, when it was dusk, I would see her sitting on the stoep, gazing out across the veld into the evening, down the dusty road that led between the thorn-trees and beyond the Dwarsberg, waiting for the lover who would come to her no more.
It was a long time before I again saw Manie Kruger. And then it was in Pretoria. I had gone there to interview the Volksraad member about an election promise. It was quite by accident that I saw Manie. And he was playing the concertina – playing as well as ever, I thought. I went away quickly. But what affected me very strangely was just that one glimpse I had of the green curtain of the bar in front of which Manie Kruger played.
Drieka and the Moon
There is a queer witchery about the moon when it is full – Oom Schalk Lourens remarked – especially the moon that hangs over the valley of the Dwarsberge in the summer-time. It does strange things to your mind, the Marico moon, and in your heart are wild and fragrant fancies, and your thoughts go very far away. Then, if you have b
een sitting on your front stoep, thinking these thoughts, you sigh and murmur something about the way of the world, and carry your chair inside.
I have seen the moon in other places besides the Marico. But it is not the same, there.
Braam Venter, the man who fell off the Government lorry once, near Nietverdiend, says that the Marico moon is like a woman laying green flowers on a grave. Braam Venter often says things like that. Particularly since the time he fell off the lorry. He fell on his head, they say.
Always when the moon shines full like that it does something to our hearts that we wonder very much about and that we never understand. Always it awakens memories. And it is singular how different these memories are with each one of us.
Johannes Oberholzer says that the full moon always reminds him of one occasion when he was smuggling cattle over the Bechuanaland border. He says he never sees a full moon without thinking of the way it shone on the steel wire-cutters that he was holding in his hand when two mounted policemen rode up to him. And the next night Johannes Oberholzer again had a good view of the full moon; he saw it through the window of the place he was in. He says the moon was very large and very yellow, except for the black stripes in front of it.
And it was in the light of the full moon that hung over the thorn-trees that I saw Drieka Breytenbach.
Drieka was tall and slender. She had fair hair and blue eyes, and lots of people considered that she was the prettiest woman in the Marico. I thought so, too, that night I met her under the full moon by the thorn-trees. She had not been in the Bushveld very long. Her husband, Petrus Breytenbach, had met her and married her in the Schweizer-Reneke district, where he had trekked with his cattle for a while during the big drought.
Afterwards, when Petrus Breytenbach was shot dead with his own Mauser by a kaffir working on his farm, Drieka went back to Schweizer-Reneke, leaving the Marico as strangely and as silently as she had come to it.
And it seemed to me that the Marico was a different place because Drieka Breytenbach had gone. And I thought of the moon, and the tricks it plays with your senses, and the stormy witchery that it flings at your soul. And I remembered what Braam Venter said, that the full moon is like a woman laying green flowers on a grave. And it seemed to me that Braam Venter’s words were not so much nonsense, after all, and that worse things could happen to a man than that he should fall off a lorry on his head. And I thought of other matters.
But all this happened only afterwards.
When I saw Drieka that night she was leaning against a thorn-tree beside the road where it goes down to the drift. But I didn’t recognise her at first. All I saw was a figure dressed in white with long hair hanging down loose over its shoulders. It seemed very unusual that a figure should be there like that at such a time of night. I remembered certain stories I had heard about white ghosts. I also remembered that a few miles back I had seen a boulder lying in the middle of the road. It was a fair-sized boulder and it might be dangerous for passing mule-carts. So I decided to turn back at once and move it out of the way.
I decided very quickly about the boulder. And I made up my mind so firmly that the saddle-girth broke from the sudden way in which I jerked my horse back on his haunches. Then the figure came forward and spoke, and I saw it was Drieka Breytenbach.
“Good evening,” I said in answer to her greeting, “I was just going back because I had remembered about something.”
“About ghosts?” she asked.
“No,” I replied truthfully, “about a stone in the road.”
Drieka laughed at that. So I laughed, too. And then Drieka laughed again. And then I laughed. In fact, we did quite a lot of laughing between us. I got off my horse and stood beside Drieka in the moonlight. And if somebody had come along at that moment and said that the predikant’s mule-cart had been capsized by the boulder in the road I would have laughed still more.
That is the sort of thing the moon in the Marico does to you when it is full.
I didn’t think of asking Drieka how she came to be there, or why her hair was hanging down loose, or who it was that she had been waiting for under the thorn-tree. It was enough that the moon was there, big and yellow across the veld, and that the wind blew softly through the trees and across the grass and against Drieka’s white dress and against the mad singing of the stars.
Before I knew what was happening we were seated on the grass under the thorn-tree whose branches leant over the road. And I remember that for quite a while we remained there without talking, sitting side by side on the grass with our feet in the soft sand. And Drieka smiled at me with a misty sort of look in her eyes, and I saw that she was lovely.
I felt that it was not enough that we should go on sitting there in silence. I knew that a woman – even a moon-woman like Drieka – expected a man to be more than just good-humoured and honest. I knew that a woman wanted a man also to be an entertaining companion for her. So I beguiled the passing moments for Drieka with interesting conversation.
I explained to her how a few days before a pebble had worked itself into my veldskoen and had rubbed some skin off the top of one of my toes. I took off my veldskoen and showed her the place. I also told her about the rinderpest and about the way two of my cows had died of the miltsiek. I also knew a lot about blue-tongue in sheep, and about gallamsiekte and the haarwurm, and I talked to her airily about these things, just as easily as I am talking to you.
But, of course, it was the moonlight that did it. I never knew before that I was so good in this idle, butterfly kind of talk. And the whole thing was so innocent, too. I felt that if Drieka Breytenbach’s husband, Petrus, were to come along and find us sitting there side by side, he would not be able to say much about it. At least, not very much.
After a while I stopped talking.
Drieka put her hand in mine.
“Oh, Schalk,” she whispered, and the moon and that misty look were in her blue eyes. “Do tell me some more.”
I shook my head.
“I am sorry, Drieka,” I answered, “I don’t know any more.”
“But you must, Schalk,” she said softly. “Talk to me about – about other things.”
I thought steadily for some moments.
“Yes, Drieka,” I said at length, “I have remembered something. There is one more thing I haven’t told you about the blue-tongue in sheep –”
“No, no, not that,” she interrupted, “talk to me about other things. About the moon, say.”
So I told her two things that Braam Venter had said about the moon. I told her the green flower one and the other one.
“Braam Venter knows lots more things like that about the moon,” I explained, “you’ll see him next time you go to Zeerust for the Nagmaal. He is a short fellow with a bump on his head from where he fell –”
“Oh, no, Schalk,” Drieka said again, shaking her head, so that a wisp of her fair hair brushed against my face, “I don’t want to know about Braam Venter. Only about you. You think out something on your own about the moon and tell it to me.”
I understood what she meant.
“Well, Drieka,” I said thoughtfully. “The moon – the moon is all right.”
“Oh, Schalk,” Drieka cried. “That’s much finer than anything Braam Venter could ever say – even with that bump on his head.”
Of course, I told her that it was nothing and that I could perhaps say something even better if I tried. But I was very proud, all the same. And somehow it seemed that my words brought us close together. I felt that that handful of words, spoken under the full moon, had made a new and witch thing come into the life of Drieka and me.
We were holding hands then, sitting on the grass with our feet in the road, and Drieka leant her head on my shoulder, and her long hair stirred softly against my face, but I looked only at her feet. And I thought for a moment that I loved her. And I did not love her because her body was beautiful, or because she had red lips, or because her eyes were blue. In that moment I did not understa
nd about her body or her lips or her eyes. I loved her for her feet; and because her feet were in the road next to mine.
And yet all the time I felt, far away at the back of my mind, that it was the moon that was doing these things to me.
“You have got good feet for walking on,” I said to Drieka.
“Braam Venter would have said that I have got good feet for dancing on,” Drieka answered, laughing. And I began to grow jealous of Braam Venter.
The next thing I knew was that Drieka had thrown herself into my arms.
“Do you think I am very beautiful, Schalk?” Drieka asked.
“You are very beautiful, Drieka,” I answered slowly, “very beautiful.”
“Will you do something for me, Schalk?” Drieka asked again, and her red lips were very close to my cheek. “Will you do something for me if I love you very much?”
“What do you want me to do, Drieka?”
She drew my head down to her lips and whispered hot words in my ear.
And so it came about that I thrust her from me, suddenly. I jumped unsteadily to my feet; I found my horse and rode away. I left Drieka Breytenbach where I had found her, under the thorn-tree by the roadside, with her hot whisperings still ringing in my ears, and before I reached home the moon had set behind the Dwarsberge.
Well, there is not much left for me to tell you. In the days that followed, Drieka Breytenbach was always in my thoughts. Her long, loose hair and her red lips and her feet that had been in the roadside sand with mine. But if she really was the ghost that I had at first taken her to be, I could not have been more afraid of her.
And it seemed singular that, while it had been my words, spoken in the moonlight, that helped to bring Drieka and me closer together, it was Drieka’s hot breath, whispering wild words in my ear, that sent me so suddenly from her side.
Once or twice I even felt sorry for having left in that fashion.
And later on when I heard that Drieka Breytenbach had gone back to Schweizer-Reneke, and that her husband had been shot dead with his own Mauser by one of the farm kaffirs, I was not surprised. In fact, I had expected it.
The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories Page 11