The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  It all happened very long ago, the first part of this story of Hen­drik Moolman and his wife Malie. And in those days, when they had just married, you would not, if the idea of laughter had come into your mind, have thought first of Hendrik Moolman telling jokes in the Indian store.

  They were just of an age, the young Moolman couple, and they were both good to look at. And when they arrived back from Zeerust after the wedding, Hendrik made a stirring show of the way he lifted Malie from the mule-cart, to carry her across the threshold of the little farmhouse in which their future life was to be cast. Needless to say, that was many years before Hendrik Moolman was to acquire the nickname of Crippled Hendrik, as the result of a fall into a diamond claim when he was drunk. Some said that his fall was an accident. Others saw in the occurrence the hand of the Lord.

  What I remember most vividly about Malie, as she was in those early days of her marriage, were her eyes, and her laughter that was in such strange contrast to her eyes. Her laughter was free and clear and ringing. Each time you heard it, it was like a sudden bright light. Her laughter was like a summer’s morning. But her eyes were dark and did not seem to belong with any part of the day at all.

  It was the women who by and by started to say about the marriage of Hendrik and Malie this thing, that Malie’s love for Hen­drik was greater than his love for her. You could see it all, they said, by that look that came on her face when Hendrik entered the voorkamer, called in from the lands because there were visitors. You could tell it too, they declared, by that unnatural stillness that would possess her when she was left alone on the farm for a few days, as would happen each time her husband went with cattle or mealies to the market town.

  With the years, also, that gay laugh of Malie Moolman’s was heard more seldom, until in the end she seemed to have forgotten how to laugh at all. But there was never any suggestion of Malie having been unhappy. That was the queerest part of it – that part of the marriage of Malie and Hendrik that confuted all the busybodies. For it proved that Malie’s devotion to Hendrik had not been just one-sided.

  They had been married a good many years before that day when it became known to Malie – as a good while before that it had become known to the rest of the white people living on this side of the Dwarsberge – that Hendrik’s return from the market town of Zeerust would be indefinitely delayed.

  Those were prosperous times, and it was said that Hendrik had taken a considerable sum with him in gold coins for his journey to the Elandsputte diamond diggings, whither he had gone in the company of the Woman of Zeerust. Malie went on staying on the farm, and saw to it that the day-to-day activities in the kraal and on the lands and in the homestead went on just as though Hendrik were still there. Instead of in the arms of the Woman of Zeerust.

  This went on for a good while, with Hendrik Moolman throwing away, on the diggings, real gold after visionary diamonds.

  There were many curious features about this thing that had happened with Hendrik Moolman. For instance, it was known that he had written to his wife quite a number of times. Jurie Steyn, who kept the post office at Drogedal, had taken the trouble on one occasion to deliver into Malie’s hands personally a letter addressed to her in her husband’s handwriting. He had taken over the letter himself, instead of waiting for Malie to send for it. And Jurie Steyn said that Malie had thanked him very warmly for the letter, and had torn open the envelope in a state of agitation, and had wept over the contents of the letter, and had then in­formed Jurie Steyn that it was from her sister in Kuruman, who wrote about the drought there.

  “It seemed to be a pretty long drought,” Jurie Steyn said to us afterwards in the post office, “judging from the number of pages.”

  It was known, however, that when a woman visitor had made open reference to the state of affairs on the Elandsputte diggings, Malie had said that her husband was suffering from a temporary infatuation for the Woman of Zeerust, of whom she spoke without bitterness. Malie said she was certain that Hendrik would grow tired of that woman, and return to her.

  Meanwhile, many rumours of what was happening with Hendrik Moolman on the Elandsputte diggings were conveyed to this part of the Marico by one means and another – mainly by donkey-cart. Later on it became known that Hendrik had sold the wagon and the oxen with which he had trekked from his farm to the diggings. Still later it became known why Malie was sending so many head of cattle to market. Finally, when a man with a waxed moustache and a notebook appeared in the neighbourhood, the farmers hereabouts, betokening no surprise, were able to direct him to the Moolman farm, where he went to take an inventory of the stock.

  By that time the Woman of Zeerust must have discovered that Hendrik Moolman was about at the end of his resources. But no­body knew for sure when she deserted him – whether it was be­fore or after that thing had happened to him which paralysed the left side of his body.

  And that was how it came about that in the end Hendrik Mool­man did return to his wife, Malie, just as she had during all that time maintained that he would. In reply to a message from Elandsputte diggings she had sent a kaffir in the mule-cart to fetch Baas Hendrik Moolman back to his farm.

  Hendrik Moolman was seated in a half-reclining posture against the kaffir who held the reins, that evening when the mule-cart drew up in front of the home into which, many years before, on the day of their wedding, he had carried his wife, Malie. There was something not unfitting about his own homecoming in the evening, in the thought that Malie would be helping to lift him off the mule-cart, now.

  Some such thought must have been uppermost in Malie’s mind also. At all events, she came forward to greet her errant husband. Apparently she now comprehended for the first time the true extent of his incapacitation. Malie had not laughed for many years. Now the sound of her laughter, gay and silvery, sent its infectious echoes ringing through the farmyard.

  Susannah and the Play-actor

  I see a company of professional actors is going to stage a performance in the schoolroom at Drogedal (Oom Schalk Lourens said). There is a poster about it nailed to a kremetart tree in front of the building. I wonder what Henri le Valois thinks of it. His name is actually Hendrik de Waal, of course. But we still call him Le Valois in the Marico. And I wonder what his wife, Susannah, thinks of it also.

  It’s many years now since Henri le Valois quit the stage to go to work on his father-in-law’s farm. But there seem to be more play-actors about than ever. The Agricultural Department has got rid of the worst of the locust plagues in these parts. But I suppose it will take more than Cooper’s dip to thin out the professional actors.

  The play presented by Henri le Valois in Zeerust – where I saw him on the stage for the first and last time – was about men who wore hats with ostrich-feathers and carried swords and had blankets slung over their shoulders, not striped, like the Basuto’s, but black; and about women who had their hair put high up and wore jewels on their silk dresses but all the same did not look as grand as the men. Henri le Valois played the role of a young captain who falls in love with the king’s wife and then leaves her in the end because of his loyalty to the king.

  Henri le Valois was very fine in that last farewell scene. From my seat near the back of the hall I very much admired the way he walked out backwards, with his arms extended towards the queen, and saying, I must away adieu adieu for ever. Only a great actor, I felt, could walk out backwards like that and not trip over his sword or get the lower part of the blanket mixed up with his spurs.

  The girls all fell in love with Henri le Valois, of course. Among them was Susannah Bekker, daughter of Petrus Bekker of Droge­dal.

  I wondered whether the girls would still feel attracted to him in the same way if they could have met him off-stage. I started wondering like that when I came across Henri le Valois in the bar of the Transvaal Hotel, one evening after the show, and most of the paint was washed off his face, and he was dressed just like me or At Naudé when we go into town and wear our shop clothes.

&nb
sp; I hardly ever enter a bar, of course. I just happened to drop in on that evening because I thought I might find At Naudé there, and I wanted to talk to him about fetching some milk-cans for me from Ramoutsa. Strangely enough, At Naudé said that he had just dropped in on the off-chance of finding me there. And because this was such a peculiar coincidence, we thought it would be a good idea to reflect further on it over a glass of brandy. There were more coincidences like that as the evening wore on and other farmers from the Groot Marico came into the bar, also just on the off-chance.

  When the coincidences had reached the stage where the bar was so full of farmers that you couldn’t walk – then it was that Henri le Valois came in. He was accompanied by Alwyn Klopper who acted the part of the king in the play.

  But before the arrival in the bar of these two actors, a great deal of talk had been going on about them. Somebody mentioned that Henri le Valois’s real name was Hendrik de Waal, and that he had taken that foreign-sounding name so that he could move about better on the stage. The name helped him particularly in the showy farewell scene at the end, that person added. You couldn’t believe then that he was actually just an ordinary farmer’s son, who had once herded cattle over rough veld with polgras, when you saw how gracefully he went off the stage – as though he was pedalling a push-bike backwards. We also said that it was quite clear why Alwyn Klopper didn’t also change his name to something French. The size of his feet were against him.

  Henri le Valois seemed surprised to find the bar so crowded when he came in, accompanied by the king. He explained that his play-acting company was concerned with improving the minds of the people living in the backveld and with bringing culture to the Boers, and so he naturally did not frequent tap rooms. He had only dropped in there for some purpose which he had forgotten now. It had gone clean out of his mind, he said, through the shock of finding so many members of his audience in a public bar. He drank a couple of quick double brandies to get over the shock.

  When it was explained to him that most of the farmers in that bar room were not members of his audience, or likely to be, he seemed to feel better about it, at first. Afterwards he didn’t seem so sure.

  A little later, when he had had a few more double brandies, Henri le Valois, standing against the crowded counter with a ciga­rette in the side of his mouth, gave us an interesting talk on what he referred to as the higher ideals of his art.

  “Why, do you know,” he said, “tonight I counted no less than nine people in the half-crown seats.”

  He had put on the play about himself and the king in every dorp from Zwartruggens to Zeerust, he said, and it had everywhere been a great cultural success. The biggest cultural success had been at Rysmierbult, where he had cleared over eleven pounds, after paying for the hall and the hotel bills of the touring company.

  “Strictly speaking, Slurry was still more of a cultural success,” he added. “I mean, we left Slurry with even more money. Only, we had a little misunderstanding with the hotel proprietor, who kept a couple of suitcases behind. Fortunately, they were suitcases belonging to the minor members of our company and whom we could replace. Yes, you have no idea how much we artists have to suffer.”

  Henri le Valois grew more and more sad. He turned to Alwyn Klop­per, the king, who during all this time had been standing next to him, silent and not drinking much.

  “That pigskin suitcase with the gold monogram, who did it belong to?” Henri le Valois asked him.

  “To a school-teacher at Krugersdorp,” the king answered, shortly. “But don’t worry about her. She got a lift back home on a lorry.”

  “And that black-and-white portmanteau with the wavy initials –” Le Valois began again. By this time he was so sad that if he hadn’t held tight on to the edge of the counter he would have fallen.

  “Wolmaransstad,” the king snapped. “He was a former income-­tax official. Nobody would give him a lift back home.”

  So Henri le Valois went on drinking large quantities of brandy. In the end he was crying into his glass. And all the time the king stood watching him, smiling and drinking scarcely at all.

  Suddenly Henri le Valois thrust the glass away from him and drew himself up to look very tall and imposing.

  “All those beautiful suitcases,” he cried.

  Then he stood back a couple of paces from the king.

  “I quit,” he said to Alwyn Klopper. “You take over. I shall not be unfaithful further. Farewell I must away adieu adieu for ever.”

  And he started back-pedalling out of the bar.

  There were those present in the bar that night who said of Henri le Valois that he had never acted more grandly, more magnifi­cently, in his life than in that scene in which he took final leave of the stage. I also thought that it was most impressive, the way he made his way out through the curtains at the bar entrance, turning his feet half outwards, as though he still had spurs on them, and making a wide sweep with his left arm as though from his waist there hung a sword.

  When he bared his hat in a farewell bow, I could almost have believed that there was a painted ostrich plume decorating his grey felt hat.

  And that was the moment in which Susannah Bekker, passing the hotel on her way back to the boarding-house where she was staying for the Nagmaal week with her parents, encountered Henri le Valois. She had before seen him only on the stage, dressed as a gallant. And so she recognised him immediately, then, in front of the bar, not from his clothing but from his bearing. They got talking, Susannah told me about it long afterwards, and she was thrilled by how human he was. This was a greater thrill than anything she had felt about him when she had seen him on the stage, even. Especially when he talked about how he was being bullied all the time by the king, who had no soul and no feelings.

  “I realised that Henri le Valois was not only a very fine human being,” Susannah said, finally, “but also a very great actor. He was play-acting drunk. What do you think of that?”

  There was no call for me to tell her that that part of it hadn’t been play-acting.

  Peaches Ripening in the Sun

  The way Ben Myburg lost his memory (Oom Schalk Lourens said) made a deep impression on all of us. We reasoned that that was the sort of thing that a sudden shock could do to you. There were those in our small section of General du Toit’s commando who could recall similar stories of how people in a moment could forget everything about the past, just because of a single dreadful happening.

  A shock like that can have the same effect on you even if you are prepared for it. Maybe it can be worse, even. And in this connection I often think of what it says in the Good Book, about that which you most feared having now at last caught up with you.

  Our commando went as far as the border by train. And when the engine came to a stop on a piece of open veld, and it wasn’t for water, this time, and the engine-driver and fireman didn’t step down with a spanner and use bad language, then we understood that the train stopping there was the beginning of the Second Boer War.

  We were wearing new clothes and we had new equipment, and the sun was shining on the barrels of our Mausers. Our new clothes had been requisitioned for us by our veldkornet at stores along the way. All the veldkornet had to do was to sign his name on a piece of paper for whatever his men purchased.

  In most cases, after we had patronised a store in that manner, the shopkeeper would put up his shutters for the day. And three years would pass and the Boer War would be over before the shopkeeper would display any sort of inclination to take the shutters down again.

  Maybe he should have put them up before we came.

  Only one seksie of General du Toit’s commando entered Natal looking considerably dilapidated. This seksie looked as though it was already the end of the Boer War, and not just the beginning. Afterwards we found out that their veldkornet had never learnt to write his name. We were glad that in the first big battle these men kept well to the rear, apparently conscious of how sinful they looked. For, to make matters worse, a regime
nt of Indian troops was fighting on that front, and we were not anxious that an Eastern race should see white men at such a disadvantage.

  “You don’t seem to remember me, Schalk,” a young fellow came up and said to me. I admitted that I didn’t recognise him, straight away, as Ben Myburg. He did look different in those smart light-green riding pants and that new hat with the ostrich feather stuck in it. You could see that he had patronised some mine concession store before the owner got his shutters down.

  “But I would know you anywhere, Schalk,” Ben Myburg went on. “Just from the quick way you hid that soap under your saddle a couple of minutes ago. I remembered where I had last seen something so quick. It was two years ago, at the Nagmaal in Nylstroom.”

  I told Ben Myburg that if it was that jar of brandy he meant, then he must realise that there had also been a good deal of misunderstanding about it. Moreover, it was not even a full jar, I said.

  But I congratulated him on his powers of memory, which I said I was sure would yet stand the Republic in good stead.

  And I was right. For afterwards, when the war of the big commandos was over, and we were in constant retreat, it would be Ben Myburg who, next day, would lead us back to the donga in which we had hidden some mealie-meal and a tin of cooking fat. And if the tin of cooking fat was empty, he would be able to tell us right away if it was kaffirs or baboons. A kaffir had a different way of eating cooking fat out of a tin from what a baboon had, Ben Myburg said.

  Ben Myburg had been recently married to Mimi van Blerk, who came from Schweizer-Reneke, a district that was known as far as the Limpopo for its attractive girls. I remembered Mimi van Blerk well. She had full red lips and thick yellow hair. Ben Myburg always looked forward very eagerly to getting letters from his pretty young wife. He would also read out to us extracts from her letters, in which she encouraged us to drive the English into the blue grass ­­– which was the name we gave to the sea in those days. For the English we had other names.