The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  For a while I lay watching the approach of the mule-cart. As I have said, it was still very far away. But gradually it drew nearer and I made out more of the details. The dark forms of the mules. The shadowy figure of Jonas, the driver.

  But as I gazed I felt my eyelids getting heavy. I told myself that with the glare of the sun on the road I would not be able to keep my eyes open much longer. I remember thinking how foolish it would be to fall asleep, then, with the mule-cart only a short distance away. It would pull up almost immediately, and I would have to wake up again. I told myself I was being foolish – and, of course, I fell asleep.

  It was while I was still telling myself that in a few moments the mule-cart would be coming to a stop in the shadow of the blue­gums that my eyes closed and I fell asleep. And I started to dream. And from this you can tell how swift a thing a dream is, and how much you can dream in a few moments.

  For I know the exact moment in which I started to dream. It was when I was looking very intently at the driver of the mule-cart and I suddenly saw, to my amazement, that the driver was no longer Jonas, the kaffir, but Adriaan Naudé. And seated beside Adriaan Naudé was a girl in a white frock. She had yellow hair that hung far down over her shoulders and her name was Fran­cina. The next minute the mule-cart drew up and Jonas jumped off and tied the reins to a wheel.

  So it was in between those flying moments that I dreamt about Adriaan Naudé and Francina.

  “It is difficult to believe, Francina,” Adriaan Naudé was saying, nodding his head in my direction, “it is difficult to believe that a white man can sink so low. If I tell you what happened in Zeerust –”

  I was getting annoyed, now. After all, Francina was a complete stranger, and Adriaan had no right to slander me in that fashion. What was more, I had a very simple explanation of the Zeerust incident. I felt that if only I could be alone with Francina for a few minutes I would be able to convince her that what had happened in Zeerust was not to my discredit at all.

  Furthermore, I would be able to tell her one or two things about Adriaan; things of so unfortunate a character that even if she believed about the Zeerust affair it would not matter much. Because, compared with Adriaan Naudé, the most inferior kind of man would still look as noble and heroic as Wolraad Woltemade that you read about in the school books.

  But even as I started to talk to Francina I realised that there was no need for me to say anything. She put her hand on my arm and looked at me; and the sun was on her hair and the shadows of the bluegums were in her eyes; and by the way she smiled at me I knew that nothing Adriaan could say about me would ever make any difference to her.

  Moreover, Adriaan Naudé had gone. You know how it is in a dream. He had completely disappeared, leaving Francina and me alone by the roadside. And I knew that Adriaan Naudé would not trouble us any more. All he had come there for was to bring Fran­cina along to me. Yet I regretted his departure, somehow. It seem­ed too easy, almost. There were a couple of things about Adriaan Naudé that I felt Francina really ought to know.

  Then it all changed, suddenly. I seemed to know that it was only a dream and that I wasn’t really standing up under the trees with Francina. I seemed to know that I was actually resting on the grass, with my head and shoulders resting against a stone. I even heard the mule-cart jolting over the rough part of the road.

  But in the next instant I was dreaming again.

  I dreamt that Francina was explaining to me, in gentle and sorrowful tones, that she couldn’t stay any longer; and that she had put her hand on my arm for the last time, in farewell; she said I was not to follow her, but that I had to close my eyes when she turned away; for no one was to know where she had come from.

  While she was saying these things my eyes lighted on her frock, which was brilliant in the sunshine. But it seemed an old-fashioned sort of frock; the kind that was worn many years before. Then, in the same moment, I saw her face, and it seemed to me that her smile was old-fashioned, somehow. It was a sweet smile, and her face, turned upwards, was strangely beautiful; but I felt in some queer way that women had smiled like that very long ago.

  It was a vivid dream. Part of it seemed more real than life; as is frequently the case with a dream on the veld, fleetingly, in the heat of the noonday.

  I asked Francina where she lived.

  “Not far from here,” she answered, “no, not far. But you may not follow me. None may go back with me.”

  She still smiled, in that way in which women smiled long ago; but as she spoke there came into her eyes a look of such intense sorrow that I was afraid to ask why I could not accompany her. And when she told me to close my eyes I had no power to protest.

  And, of course, I didn’t close my eyes. Instead, I opened them. Just as Jonas was jumping down from the mule-cart to fasten the reins on to a wheel.

  Adriaan Naudé woke up about the same time that I did, and asked Jonas why he had been away so long, and spoke more about the indolence of the kaffirs. And I got up from the grass and stretched my limbs and wondered about dreams. It seemed in­credible that I could have dreamt so much in such a few moments.

  And there was a strange sadness in my heart because the dream had gone. My mind was filled with a deep sense of loss. I told myself that it was foolish to have feelings like that about a dream: even though it was a particularly vivid dream, and part of it seemed more real than life.

  Then, when we were ready to go, Adriaan Naudé took out his pipe; before filling it he stooped down as though to knock the ash out of it, as I had invited him to do before we fell asleep. But it so happened that Adriaan Naudé did not ever knock his pipe out against that stone.

  “That’s funny,” I heard Adriaan say as he bent forward.

  I saw what he was about; so I knelt down and helped him. When we had cleared away the accumulation of yellow grass and dead leaves at the foot of the stone we found that the inscription on it, though battered, was quite legible. It was very simply worded. Just a date chiselled on to the stone. And below the date a name: Francina Malherbe.

  On to Freedom

  How we could tell that Gawie Prinsloo had been changed by his experiences on the diggings – Oom Schalk Lourens said – was when he came back from the diamond fields wearing a tie.

  It was sad to see a young man altered so much by a few months of pick and shovel work on a claim. We came to the conclusion, however, that it wasn’t the time he had spent on his claim with the pick and shovel that had changed Gawie Prinsloo: he must have got changed like that during those periods in which he didn’t have a shovel in his hand, and the sweat wasn’t dripping off him, and when he wasn’t on his claim, even.

  And judging by the way he had altered, it would seem that during much of Gawie Prinsloo’s stay on the diggings he was not on the claim.

  Of course, it was not a new thing in the Bushveld for a young man to go to the diggings, fresh and unspoilt and God-fearing, and to come back different. Often at the Nagmaal the predikant would utter warnings about the dangers of the diamond fields; he would speak in solemn tones about what he called the false glitter of the alluvial diggings, and about the vanity of its carnal shows and sinful worldly riches. But it is just the unfortunate way of the world that many young men, who in the ordinary course would never have thought of leaving the Marico, packed up and went to the diggings after they heard about some of the things the predikant said: about the wild sort of life that was led there, and about the evils of suddenly acquired wealth.

  The predikant was on occasion very outspoken in dealing with the shameful things that took place on the diggings, and it was noticeable that at such times certain members of his congregation would shuffle their feet and get restless at his language. And only afterwards the predikant would discover that the reason they were restless was because they wanted to be off to the diggings.

  I can still remember a remark that Wynand Oosthuizen once made in regard to this matter. It was when we were preparing to leave Zeerust after the Nagmaal.


  “As you all know,” Wynand Oosthuizen said, “my farm is situated right up against the Limpopo, and I live there alone. Conse­quently, I have much time in which to think. And I have thought about this question of the predikant and the young men and the diamond diggings. Yes, I have given it much thought. And I perceive that there is only one way in which the predikant will be able to get people to stay away from the diamond fields: he must say that the diamond fields are a lot like heaven.”

  We looked at Wynand Oosthuizen, wondering. It seemed to do queer things to a man, living alone like that beside the Limpopo.

  Because we made no answer, Wynand Oosthuizen thought, apparently, that we hadn’t understood what he was saying.

  “You see,” he went on, “after every Nagmaal I have observed that there is a big rush to the diamond diggings. That is because the predikant talks so much about the wickedness of the life on the diggings; how the diamond fields are like Babylon, and how vice and evil flourish there, and how people make money there and then forget all about their duty to the church. Now, if the predikant were to say that the diggings are exactly like the Kingdom of Heaven, nobody would want to go. No, nobody at all.”

  Wynand Oosthuizen winked, then, and set his hat at a slant and strode across to his ox-wagon. In silence, shaking our heads, we watched him getting ready to trek back to the Limpopo.

  To do some more thinking, no doubt.

  Then there was this matter of Gawie Prinsloo. As I have said, he was more changed than any other man that I had ever seen come back from the diggings. And I had seen many of them come back. Some came back with money that they didn’t quite know what to do with: there seemed so much of it. Others came back penniless. One man whom I knew very well was reduced to selling his wagon and oxen on the diggings; and he returned to the Marico on foot, singing.

  But Gawie Prinsloo was the only man who had ever come back from the diggings wearing a tie. What was more, it was a red tie; and Gawie Prinsloo said that he was wearing it for a political reason.

  It was some time before I realised what Gawie Prinsloo meant by this. Then I proceeded to tell him about politics in the old days. Things were much better then, I said, and much simpler. Politics was concerned only with the question as to which man was going to be president.

  “And if the wrong man got elected,” I said to Gawie, very pointedly, “you merely inspanned and trekked out of the country. You didn’t put on a red tie and walk about talking the sort of thing that you are talking now.”

  Gawie thought that over for a little while. Then he said that it was cowardly to inspan and trek away from a difficulty. He explained that the right thing to do was to face a problem and to find a solution to it. It was easy to see, he said, how this spirit of trekking away had produced a race of men with weak characters and unenlightened minds.

  Naturally, I asked him what he meant by a statement like that. I told him that in the past I had on several occasions trekked out of both the Transvaal and the Free State because I disapproved of the presidents.

  “Yes, Oom Schalk,” Gawie said, “and look at you.”

  From that remark, thoughtlessly uttered on a summer afternoon, you can see how much the diggings had altered Gawie Prinsloo.

  Afterwards we found out that there were other points about Gawie’s new politics besides the wearing of a red tie. For instance, he held views about kaffirs that nobody in the Bushveld had ever heard of before. He spoke a great deal about freedom, and in be­tween mentioning what a good thing freedom was he would mumble something to the effect that in the Marico the kaffirs weren’t being treated right.

  But, of course, it was quite a while before we discovered the extent to which Gawie Prinsloo’s mind had been influenced by this kind of politics. He introduced us to it gradually, as though he was afraid of the shock it might give us if he acquainted us with all his opinions right away.

  One day, however, in the home of Jasper Steyn, the ouderling, a number of farmers questioned Gawie Prinsloo closely on his be­liefs, and you can imagine the sensation that was caused when he admitted that, in his view, a kaffir was just as good as a white man.

  “Do you really mean to say,” Jasper Steyn, the ouderling, asked, choosing his words very carefully, “that you can’t see any important difference between a kaffir and a white man?”

  “No,” Gawie Prinsloo answered. “There is only a difference of colour, and that doesn’t count.”

  Several of us burst out laughing at that; the ouderling rocked in his chair from side to side; you could hear him laughing right across in the next district, almost.

  “Would you say,” the ouderling went on, wiping the tears out of his eyes, “would you say that there was no difference between me and a kaffir? Would you say, for instance, that I am just a white kaffir?”

  “Yes,” Gawie Prinsloo responded, promptly, “but that’s what I thought about you even before I went to the diggings.”

  Subsequently, others took up the task of questioning Gawie Prinsloo. After he had got over his first sort of diffidence, however, there was no stopping him; he embarked on a long speech about justice and human rights and liberty; and what he kept on stressing all the time was what he called the wrongs to the kaffirs.

  It was easy to see that Gawie Prinsloo had been associating with a very questionable type of person on the diggings.

  And because we knew that it was the diamond diggings that had led him astray we extended a great deal of tolerance towards his unusual utterances. We treated him as somebody who was not altogether responsible for what he said. In this way it became quite a fashionable pastime in the Marico for people to listen to Gawie Prinsloo talk. And he would talk by the hour about the way the kaffirs were being oppressed.

  “Look, Gawie,” I said to him once. “Why do you tell only the white people about the injustice that is being inflicted on the kaffirs? Why don’t you go and tell the kaffirs about what is being done to them?”

  Gawie told me that he had already done so.

  “I have gone among the kaffirs,” he said, “and I have told them about their wrongs.”

  But he admitted that his talks didn’t seem to do much good, somehow; because the kaffirs just went on smoking dagga – inhaling it through water, he said.

  “And when I have told them about their wrongs and about freedom they have laughed,” Gawie explained, looking very puzzled. “Loudly.”

  So the months passed, and Gawie Prinsloo’s red tie got crinkled and faded-looking, and when Nagmaal came round again he was still in exactly the same position in regard to his politics; he still spoke fervently about justice for the kaffirs, and he had not yet brought anybody round to his way of thinking. Moreover, he was no longer considered to be amusing. People began to remark that it was annoying to have to listen to his saying the same thing over and over again; they also hinted that it was about time he left the Bushveld.

  It was then that Wynand Oosthuizen, once more coming to Zeerust for the Nagmaal, encountered Gawie Prinsloo and his faded red tie and his politics. Several of us were present at this meeting. By this time Gawie Prinsloo was slightly desperate with his message. He had grown so used to people not taking him seriously anymore that he had given up reasoning with them in a calm way. So it was in a markedly aggressive manner that he approached Wynand Oosthuizen.

  “The kaffirs,” Gawie Prinsloo called out to Wynand, “the kaffirs aren’t getting justice in the Marico. And a kaffir is just as good as you are.”

  Gawie Prinsloo started to walk away, then; but Wynand Oost­huizen pulled him back – by his neck tie.

  “Say that again,” Wynand demanded.

  Nothing if not fearless, Gawie repeated what he had said, and a lot more besides.

  Contrary to what we had expected, Wynand Oosthuizen did not get annoyed. Nor did he laugh. Instead, he pushed back his hat and looked intently at the young man with the washed-out red tie.

  “This is something new,” he said slowly. “I haven’t heard that point of view bef
ore. And I can’t tell whether you are right or wrong. But I have got an idea. My farm is in the far north, on the Limpopo, and I live there alone. I do a lot of thinking there. You come and stay with me until the next Nagmaal, and we will think this question out together.”

  We were accustomed to Wynand Oosthuizen acting, on occasion, in a singular fashion; it was well known that the loneliness of his life by the Limpopo made his outlook different from that of most people. So we were not surprised at the nature of the invitation that he extended to Gawie Prinsloo. Nor were we surprised at Gawie Prinsloo’s acceptance. For that matter, Gawie could not very well have done anything else: Wynand Oosthuizen was holding him so firmly by the tie.

  “I will come with you,” Gawie Prinsloo said, “but I know that I am right.”

  Thus it was that they met in Zeerust and arranged to travel together to the Limpopo, to study the new politics about freedom and about equal rights for the kaffirs – Wynand Oosthuizen, the lonely thinker, and Gawie Prinsloo, the young firebrand.

  They agreed to meet again in church, at the Nagmaal, and to trek away as soon as possible after the service was over.

  And I often wondered, subsequently, to what extent it was the predikant’s sermon that had influenced two men who had planned to sojourn by the Limpopo and think of freedom. Because, in the morning, after the Nagmaal service, when Wynand Oosthuizen trekked away in his ox-wagon, Gawie Prinsloo was with him, and together they travelled the long and dusty road that led south, away from the thorn-trees of the Lowveld, to the diggings.

  Matha and the SnakeZ

  Yes, Roderick Guise was his name.

  I remember the time he first came to live on this side of the Dwarsberge. He came in a donkey-cart and in the back, along with a pile of blankets and things, he had a thick bundle of white paper. We found out at once that he was a man who wrote animal stories. It wasn’t difficult for us to find this out, either. For that was the first thing he said to us when he stopped at Kris Lem­mer’s post office.