The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  But at that moment Gertruida returned with a little black book that you could almost have taken for a Dutch Reformed Church psalm-book. Only, I knew that what was printed inside it was as iniquitous as the candle burning in the corner.

  Yet I also began to wonder if, in not knowing the difference, a Bapedi really was so very ignorant, even though he walked with his buttocks sticking out.

  “My daughter is in this other room,” Gertruida said, and started in the direction of the door. The predikant followed her. Just before entering the bedroom he turned round and faced the ou­derling.

  “Will you enter with me, Brother Erasmus?” the predikant asked.

  The ouderling did not answer. The veins stood out on his forehead. On his face you could read the conflict that went on inside him. For what seemed a very long time he stood quite motionless. Then he stooped down to the rusbank for his hat – which he did not need – and walked after the predikant into the bedroom.

  Cometh Comet

  Hans Engelbrecht was the first farmer in the Schweizer-Reneke District to trek (Oom Schalk Lourens said). With his wife and daughter and what was left of his cattle, he moved away to the northern slopes of the Dwarsberge, where the drought was less severe. Afterwards he was joined by other farmers from the same area. I can still remember how untidy the veld looked in those days, with rotting carcasses and sun-bleached bones lying about everywhere. Day after day we had stood at the boreholes, pumping an ever-decreasing trickle of brackish water into the cattle troughs. We watched in vain for a sign of a cloud. And it seemed that if anything did fall out of that sky, it wouldn’t do us much good: it would be a shower of brimstone, most likely.

  Still, it was a fine time for the aasvoëls and the crows. That was at the beginning, of course. Afterwards, when all the carcasses had been picked bare, and the Boers had trekked, most of the birds of prey flew away, also.

  We trekked away in different directions. Four or five families eventually came to a halt at the foot of the Dwarsberge, near the place where Hans Engelbrecht was outspanned. In the vast area of the Schweizer-Reneke District only one man had chosen to stay behind. He was Ocker Gieljan, a young bywoner who had worked for Hans Engelbrecht since his boyhood. Ocker Gieljan spoke rarely, and then his words did not always seem to us to make sense.

  Hans Engelbrecht was only partly surprised when, on the morning that the ox-wagon was loaded and the long line of oxen that were skin and bone started stumbling along the road to the north, Ocker Gieljan made it clear that he was not leaving the farm. The native voorloper had already gone to the head of the span and Hans Engelbrecht’s wife and his eighteen-year-old daughter, Maria, were seated on the wagon, under the tent-sail, when Ocker Gieljan suddenly declared that he had decided to stay behind on the farm “to look after things here.”

  This was another instance of Ocker Gieljan’s saying something that did not make sense. There could be nothing for him to look after, there, since in the whole district hardly a lizard was left alive.

  Hans Engelbrecht was in no mood to waste time in arguing with a daft bywoner. Accordingly, he got the kaffirs to unload half a sack of mealie-meal and a quantity of biltong in front of Ocker Gieljan’s mud-walled room.

  During the past few years it had not rained much in the Marico Bushveld, either. But there was at least water in the Molopo, and the grazing was fair. Several months passed. Every day, from our camp by the Molopo, we studied the skies, which were of an intense blue. There was no longer that yellow tinge in the air that we had got used to in the Schweizer-Reneke District. But there was never a rain-cloud.

  The time came, also, when Hans Engelbrecht was brought to understand that the Lord had visited still more trouble on himself and his family. A little while before we had trekked away from our farms, a young insurance agent had left the district suddenly for Cape Town. That was a long distance to run away, especially when you think of how bad the roads were in those days. And in some strange fashion it seemed to me as though that young insurance agent was actually our leader. For he stood, after all, with his light hat and short jacket, at the head of our flight out of the Schweizer-Reneke area.

  It became a commonplace, after a while, for Maria Engelbrecht to be seen seated in the grass beside her father’s wagon, weeping. Few pitied her. She must have sat in the grass too often, with that insurance agent with the pointed, polished shoes, Lettie Grobler said to some of the women – forgetting that there had been no grass left in the Schweizer-Reneke veld at the time when Hans Engelbrecht’s daughter was being courted.

  It was easy for Maria to wipe the tears from her face, another woman said. Easier than to wipe away her shame, the woman meant.

  Now and again, from some traveller who had passed through Schweizer-Reneke, we who had trekked out of that stricken region would hear a few useless things about it. We learnt nothing that we did not already know. Ocker Gieljan was still on the Engelbrecht farm, we heard. And the only other living creature in the whole district was a solitary crow. A passing traveller had seen Ocker Gieljan at the borehole. He was pumping water into a trough for the crow, the traveller said.

  “When his mealie-meal gives out, Ocker will find his way here, right enough,” Hans Engelbrecht growled impatiently.

  Then the night came when, from our encampment beside the Molopo, we first saw the comet, in the place above the Dwarsberg rante where the sun had gone down. We all began to wonder what that new star with the long tail meant. Would it bring rain? We didn’t know. We could see, of course, that the star was an omen. Even an uneducated kaffir would know that. But we did not know what sort of omen it was.

  If the bark of the maroelas turned black before the polgras was in seed, we would know that it would be a long winter. And if a wind sprang up suddenly in the evening, blowing away from the sunset, we would next morning send the cattle out later to graze. We knew many things about the veld and the sky and the seasons. But even the oldest Free State farmer among us didn’t know what effect a comet had on a mealie-crop.

  Hans Engelbrecht said that we should send for Rev. Losper, the missionary who ministered to the Bechuanas at Ramoutsa. But the rest of us ignored his suggestion.

  During the following nights the comet became more clearly visible. A young policeman on patrol in these parts called on us one evening. When we spoke to him about the star, he said that he could do nothing about it, himself. It was a matter for the higher authorities, he said, laughing.

  Nevertheless, he had made a few calculations, the policeman explained, and he had sent a report to Pretoria. He estimated that the star was twenty-seven and a half miles in length, and that it was travelling faster than a railway train. He would not be surprised if the star reached Pretoria before his report got there. That would spoil his chances of promotion, he added.

  We did not take much notice of the policeman’s remarks, however. For one thing, he was young. And, for another, we did not have much respect for the police.

  “If a policeman doesn’t even know how to get on to the spoor of a couple of kaffir oxen that I smuggle across the Bechuanaland border,” Thys Bekker said, “how does he expect to be able to follow the footprints of a star across the sky? That is big man’s work.”

  The appearance of the comet caused consternation among the Bechuanas in the village of Ramoutsa, where the mission station was. It did not take long for some of their stories about the star to reach our encampment on the other side of the Molopo. And although, at first, most of us professed to laugh at what we said were just ignorant kaffir superstitions, yet in the end we also began to share something of the Bechuana’s fears.

  “Have you heard what the kaffirs say about the new star?” Arnoldus Grobler, husband of Lettie Grobler, asked of Thys Bek­ker. “They say that it is a red beast with a fat belly like a very great chief, and it is going to come to eat up every blade of grass and every living thing.”

  “In that case, I hope he lands in Schweizer-Reneke,” Thys Bek­ker said. “If that red beast com
es down on my farm, all that will happen is that in a short while there will be a whole lot more bones lying around to get white in the sun.”

  Some of us felt that it was wrong of Thys Bekker to treat the matter so lightly. Moreover, this story only emanated from Ra­moutsa, where there were a mission station and a post office. But a number of other stories, that were in every way much better, started soon afterwards to come out of the wilder parts of the Bushveld, travelling on foot. It seemed that the further a tribe of kaffirs lived away from civilisation, the more detailed and de­pendable was the information they had about the comet.

  I know that I began to feel that Hans Engelbrecht had made the right suggestion in the first place, when he had said that we should send for the missionary. And I sensed that a number of others in our camp shared my feelings. But not one of us wanted to make this admission openly.

  In the end it was Hans Engelbrecht himself who sent to Ramoutsa for Rev. Losper. By that time the comet was – each night in its rising – higher in the heavens, and it soon got round that the new star portended the end of the world. Lettie Grobler went so far as to declare that she had seen the good Lord Himself riding in the tail of the comet. What convinced us that she had, indeed, seen the Lord, was when she said that He had on a hat of the same shape as the predikant in Zwartruggens wore.

  Lettie Grobler also said that the Lord was coming down to punish all of us for the sins of Maria Engelbrecht. This thought disturbed us greatly. We began to resent Maria’s presence in our midst.

  It was then that Hans Engelbrecht had sent for the missionary.

  Meanwhile, Rev. Losper had his hands full with the Bechuanas at Ramoutsa, who seemed on the point of panicking in earnest. The latest story about the comet had just reached them, and because it had come from somewhere out of the deepest part of Africa, where the natives wore arrows tipped with leopard fangs stuck through their nostrils, like moustaches, it was easily the most terrifying story of all. The story had come to the village, thumped out on the tom-toms.

  The Bechuana chief at Ramoutsa – so Rev. Losper told us afterwards – fell into such a terror at the message brought by the speaking drums, that he thrust a handful of earth into his mouth, without thinking. He would have swallowed it, too, the missionary said, if one of his indunas hadn’t restrained him in time, pointing out to the chief that perhaps the drum-men had got the message wrong. For, since the post office had come to Ramoutsa, the kaffirs whose work in the village it was to receive and send out messages on their tom-toms had got somewhat out of practice.

  Consequently, because of the tumult at Ramoutsa, it happened that Ocker Gieljan arrived at the encampment before Rev. Losper got there.

  Ocker Gieljan looked very tired and dusty on that afternoon when he walked up to Hans Engelbrecht’s wagon. He took off his hat and, smiling somewhat vacantly, sat down without speaking in the shade of the veld-tent, inside which Maria Engelbrecht lay on a mattress. Neither Hans Engelbrecht nor his wife asked Ocker Gieljan any questions about his journey from the Schweizer-Reneke farm. They knew that he could have nothing to tell.

  Shortly afterwards, Ocker Gieljan made a communication to Hans Engelbrecht, speaking diffidently. Thereupon Hans Engel­brecht went into the tent and spoke to his wife and daughter. A few minutes later he came out, looking pleased with himself.

  “Sit down here on this riempiestoel, Ocker,” Hans Engelbrecht said to his prospective son-in-law, “and tell me how you came to leave the farm.”

  “I got lonely,” Ocker Gieljan answered, thoughtfully. “You see, the crow flew away. I was alone, after that. The crow was then already weak. He didn’t fly straight, like crows do. His wings wobbled.”

  When he told me about this, years later, Hans Engelbrecht said that something in Ocker Gieljan’s tone brought him a sudden vision of the way his daughter, Maria, had also left the Schweizer-Reneke District. With broken wings.

  I thought that Rev. Losper looked relieved to find, on his arrival at the camp, some time later, that all that was required of him, now, was the performance of a marriage ceremony.

  On the next night but one, Maria Engelbrecht’s child was born. All the adults in our little trekker community came in the night and the rain – which had been falling steadily for many hours – with gifts for Maria and her child.

  And when I saw the star again, during the temporary break in the rain-clouds, it seemed to me that it was not such a new star, at all: that it was, indeed, a mighty old star.

  .

  Great-uncle Joris

  For quite a number of Boers in the Transvaal Bushveld the expedition against Majaja’s tribe of Bechuanas – we called them the Platkop kaffirs – was unlucky.

  There was a young man with us on this expedition who did not finish a story that he started to tell of a bygone war. And for a good while afterwards the relations were considerably strained between the long-established Transvalers living in these parts and the Cape Boers who had trekked in more recently.

  I can still remember all the activity that went on north of the Dwarsberge at that time, with veldkornets going from one farmhouse to another to recruit burghers for the expedition, and with provisions and ammunition having to be got together, and with new stories being told every day about how cheeky the Platkop kaffirs were getting.

  I must mention that about that time a number of Boers from the Cape had trekked into the Marico Bushveld. In the Drogedal area, indeed, the recently arrived Cape Boers were almost as numerous as the Transvalers who had been settled here for a considerable while. At that time I, too, still regarded myself as a Cape Boer, since I had only a few years before quit the Schweizer-Reneke District for the Western Transvaal. When the veldkornet came to my farm on his recruiting tour, I volunteered my services immediately.

  “Of course, we don’t want everybody to go on commando,” the veldkornet said, studying me somewhat dubiously, after I had informed him that I was from the Cape, and that older relatives of mine had taken part in wars against the kaffirs in the Eastern Province. “We need some burghers to stay behind to help guard the farms. We can’t leave all that to the women and children.”

  The veldkornet seemed to have conceived an unreasonable prejudice against people whose forebears had fought against the Xhosas in the Eastern Province. But I assured him that I was very anxious to join, and so in the end he consented. “A volunteer is, after all, worth more to a fighting force than a man who has to be commandeered against his will,” the veldkornet said, stroking his beard. “Usually.”

  A week later, on my arrival at the big camp by the Steenbok­spruit, where the expedition against the Platkop kaffirs was being assembled, I was agreeably surprised to find many old friends and acquaintances from the Cape Colony among the burghers on commando. There were also a large number of others whom I then met for the first time, who were introduced to me as new immigrants from the Cape.

  Indeed, among ourselves we spoke a good deal about this proud circumstance – about the fact that we Cape Boers actually outnumbered the Transvalers in this expedition against Majaja – and we were glad to think that in time of need we had not failed to come to the help of our new fatherland. For this reason the coolness that made itself felt as between Transvaler and Cape Boer, after the expedition was over, was all the more regrettable.

  We remained camped for a good number of days beside the Steenbokspruit. During that time I became friendly with Frikkie van Blerk and Jan Bezuidenhout, who were also originally from the Cape. We craved excitement. And when we were seated around the camp-fire, talking of life in the Eastern Province, it was natural enough that we should find ourselves swapping stories of the adventures of our older relatives in the wars against the Xhosas. We were all three young, and so we spoke like veterans, forgetting that our knowledge of frontier fighting was based only on hearsay. Each of us was an authority on the best way of defeating a Xhosa impi without loss of life to anybody except the members of the impi. Frikkie van Blerk took the lead in this kind of talk, an
d I may say that he was peculiar in his manner of expressing himself, sometimes. Unfeeling, you might say. Anyway, as the night wore on, there were in the whole Transvaal, I am sure, no three young men less worried than we were about the different kinds of calamities that, in this uncertain world, would overtake a Xhosa impi.

  “Are you married, Schalk?” Jan Bezuidenhout asked me, suddenly.

  “No,” I replied, “but Frikkie van Blerk is. Why do you ask?”

  Jan Bezuidenhout sighed.

  “It is all right for you,” he informed me. “But I am also married. And it is for burghers like Frikkie van Blerk and myself that a war can become a most serious thing. Who is looking after your place while you are on commando, Frikkie?”

  Frikkie van Blerk said that a friend and neighbour, Gideon Kotze, had made special arrangement with the veldkornet, where­by he was released from service with the commando on condition that he kept an eye on the farms within a twenty-mile radius of his own.

  “The thought that Gideon Kotze is looking after things, in that way, makes me feel much happier,” Frikkie van Blerk added. “It is nice for me to know that my wife will not be quite alone all the time.”

  “Gideon Kotze –” Jan Bezuidenhout repeated, and sighed again.

  “What do you mean by that sigh?” Frikkie van Blerk demanded, quickly, a nasty tone seeming to creep into his voice.

  “Oh, nothing,” Jan Bezuidenhout answered, “oh, nothing at all.”

  As he spoke he kicked at a log on the edge of the fire. The fine sparks rose up very high in the still air and got lost in the leaves of the thorn-tree overhead.

  Frikkie van Blerk cleared his throat. “For that matter,” he said in a meaningful way to Jan Bezuidenhout, “you are also a married man. Who is looking after your farm – and your wife – while you are sitting here?”

  Jan Bezuidenhout waited for several moments before he an­s­wered.