The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  For the second time Piet Human walked into the gathering dusk alone.

  When the Heart is Eager

  It was a visit that I remembered for the rest of my life (Oom Schalk Lourens said).

  I was a small child, then. My father and his brother took me along in the back seat of the Cape-cart when they went to see an old man with a white beard. And when this old man stooped down to shake hands with me they told me to say, “Goeie dag, Oom Gysbert.” I thought Oom Gysbert had something to do with God. I thought so from his voice and from Bible pictures I had seen of holy men, like prophets, who wore the same kind of beards.

  My father and uncle went to see Oom Gysbert about pigs, which it seemed that he bred. And afterwards, when we drove home again, and my father and uncle spoke of Oom Gysbert, they both said he was a real old Pharisee. From that I was satisfied that I had been right in thinking of Oom Gysbert as a Bible person.

  “Saying that those measled animals he sent us were the same prize pigs we had bought and paid for,” my uncle went on, while we were riding back in the Cape-cart. “Does he not know how Ananias was smitten by the Lord?”

  But that was not the reason why I remembered our visit to Oom Gysbert. For while I was on his farm I saw no pigs, measled or otherwise. And later in life I was to come across many more people that I have heard compared to Bible characters. To Judas, for instance.

  After I had shaken hands with Oom Gysbert, the three men walked off together in the direction of the pigsties. I was left alone there, at the side of the house, where there was a stream of brown water flowing over rounded stones. This in itself was a sufficiently strange circumstance. You know how dry it is in these parts. I had until then seen water only in a dam or being pumped out of a borehole into a cattle-trough. I had never before in my life seen a stream of water flowing away over stones.

  I learnt afterwards that Oom Gysbert’s farm was near the Mo­lopo, and that he was thus enabled to lead off furrows of water, except in the times of most severe drought, to irrigate his tilled lands. My father and uncle had left me by one of those water-­furrows.

  That was something I did not know then, of course.

  I walked for some little distance downstream, paddling in the water, since I was bare-footed. Then it was that I came across a sight that I have never since forgotten. I had, of course, before then seen flowers. Veld flowers. And the moepel and the maroela in bloom. But that was the first time in my life that I had seen such pink and white flowers, growing in such amazing profusion, climbing over and covering a fence of wire-netting that seemed very high and that stretched away as far as I could see.

  I could not explain then, any more than I can now, the feelings of joy that came to me when I stood by that fence where rambling roses clustered.

  At intervals, from the direction of the pigsties, came the voices of my father and my uncle and Oom Gysbert, who were conversing. They were quite far away, for I could not see them. But they were conversing to each other very clearly, as though each thought that the other could perhaps not hear very well. Oom Gysbert was saying mostly, “Prize Large Whites,” and my father and uncle were saying mostly, “Measled walking rubbish.”

  Afterwards it seemed that Oom Gysbert’s wife had gone across to the pigsties, too. For I could hear a woman’s voice starting to converse as well. She conversed even more distinctly than the men. So much so, that when a native passed where I was standing by the roses, he shook his head at me. For Oom Gys­bert’s wife had likewise begun by saying mostly, “Prize Large Whites.” But she also ended up by saying, “Measled walking rubbish.” And from the way the native shook his head it appeared that she wasn’t talking about the pigs that Oom Gysbert had sold to my father and my uncle.

  Meanwhile, I stood there by the fence, in childhood wonderment at all that loveliness. It was getting on towards evening. And all the air was filled with the fragrance of the roses. And there was the feeling that goes with wet earth. And a few pink and white petals floated in the brown water that rippled about my feet.

  I was thrilled at this new strangeness and freshness of the world. And I thought that I would often again know the same kind of thrill.

  But I never did.

  Perhaps it is that as we grow older our senses do not get swayed by the perfume of flowers as much as they did when we were young. Or maybe it is that flowers just haven’t got the same perfume anymore.

  I realised that when I met Magda Burgers.

  I should explain that my father gave up farming in that part of the Marico a few years after his conversation with Oom Gysbert. My father said that the Bushveld was suited only for pigs. Hypo­critical pigs with long white beards, my father took pains to make clear. So we went to the Highveld. Afterwards we trekked back to the Marico.

  For in the meantime my father had found that the Highveld was good only for snakes. Snakes in the grass, who said one thing to you when they meant another, my father pointed out.

  And years later I went to settle north of the Dwarsberge. Every­thing had changed a great deal, however, from when I had lived there as a child. People had died or trekked away. Strangers had come in and taken their places. Landmarks had grown unrecognisable.

  Then, one day, I met Magda Burgers. I had gone over to Willem Burgers’s farm with the intention of staying only long enough to borrow some mealie sacks. When I saw his daughter, Magda, I forgot what I had come about. This was all the more remarkable since the colour of Magda’s hair kept on reminding me over and over again of ripe mealies. I stayed until quite late, and before leaving I had promised Willem Burgers that I would vote for him at the next Dwarsberg school committee elections.

  I went to call on Willem Burgers often after that. My pretext was that I wanted to know still better why I should not vote for the other school committee candidates.

  He told me. And I thought it was a pity that my father was not still alive to hear Willem Burgers talk. It would have done my father’s heart good for him to know that he had been quite right when he said of the bush country that it was fit only for pigs with white beards. Willem Burgers also brought in pigs with brown beards and black beards, as well as a sprinkling of pigs that were clean-shaven. Willem Burgers also compared several of his rival candidates with persons in the Bible. I felt glad, then, that I had not also allowed my name to go forward the time they were taking nominations for the school committee.

  Magda Burgers was in her early twenties. She was gay. There was something in her prettiness that in a strange way eluded me, also. And for this reason, I suppose, I was attracted to her more than ever.

  But my real trouble was that I had little opportunity of talking to Magda alone.

  I felt that she was not completely indifferent to me. I could tell that in a number of ways. There was, for instance, the afternoon when she allowed me to turn the handle of the cream separator for her in the milk-shed. That was very pleasant. The only difficulty was that I had to stand sideways. For it was a small shed. And Willem Burgers took up most of the room, sitting on an up­turned bucket. He was busy telling me that Gerhardus Oost­hui­zen was like a hyena.

  Another time, Magda allowed me to dry the cups for her in the kitchen when she washed up after we had had coffee. But the kitchen was also small, and her father took up a lot of space, sitting on an upturned paraffin box. He was then engaged in explaining to me that Flip Welman was like a green tree-snake with black spots on his behind. Nevertheless, each time Magda Burgers passed me a spoon to dry, I was able to hold her hand for a few moments. Once she was so absent-minded as to pass me her hand even when there wasn’t a spoon in it.

  But during all these weeks I was never able to speak to Magda Burgers on her own. And always there was something in her pretti­ness that eluded me.

  Then, one afternoon, when Magda’s father was telling me that ‘Rooi’ Francois Hanekom was like a crocodile with laced-up top-boots and a gold chain on his belly, two men came to the door. They were strangers to me. I could not remember Willem Bu
rgers having mentioned them to me, either, as resembling some of the more unsatisfactory sort of Bushveld animal. From this I con­cluded that they were not candidates for the school committee.

  Magda told me that the visitors were the Van Breda brothers.

  “The tall one with the cleft in his chin is Joost van Breda,” she said.

  Willem Burgers walked off with the two men along a footpath that led to the back of the house.

  That was how, for the first time, I came to find myself alone with Magda. And because she looked so beautiful to me, then, with a light in her eyes that I thought not to have seen there before, I told her of my visit to a farm, long ago, in the company of my father and my uncle. I told her of how I stood by a fence covered in roses, where there was a stream of brown water. I spoke of the rose perfume that had enchanted me as a child, and that I had not known since. It seems queer to me, now, that I was able to say so much to her, all in a few minutes.

  I also said a few more words to her in a voice that I could not keep steady.

  “Oom Gysbert?” Magda asked. “Why, it must be this same farm. Years ago this farm belonged to an old Gysbert Steenkamp. Come, I will show you.”

  Magda led me out of the house along a path which was diffe­r­ent from the footpath her father and the Van Breda brothers had taken, and which was not the way, either, to the milk-shed.

  It was getting on towards sunset. In the west the sky was gaudy with stripes like a native blanket. In the distance we could hear the voices of Magda’s father and the Van Breda brothers raised in conversation. It was all just like long ago. Before I realised it I found I had taken Magda’s hand.

  “I suppose they are talking about pigs,” I said to Magda. And I laughed, remembering that other day, which did not seem so far off, then, when I was a child.

  “Yes,” Magda answered. “Joost van Breda – the one with the cleft in his chin – bought some pigs from my father last month.”

  Even before we got there, I knew it was the same place. I could sense it all in a single moment, and without knowing how.

  A few yards further on I came across that fence. It did not look at all high, anymore. But it was clustered about with pink and white roses that grew in great profusion, climbing over and covering the netting for almost as far as I could see.

  Before I reached the fence, however, Magda Burgers had left me. She had slipped her small white hand out of mine and had sped off through the trees into the gathering dusk – and in the direction from which came the voices of her father and the two Van Breda brothers. The three men were conversing very clearly, by then, as though each thought the other was deaf. The Van Breda brothers were also laughing very distinctly. They laughed every time Magda’s father said, “Prize Large Whites.” And after they laughed they used rough language.

  A little later a girl’s voice started joining in the conversation. And I did not need a native to come by and shake his head at me. It was a sad enough thing for me, in any case, to have to listen to a young girl taking the part of two strangers against her father. She sided particularly with one of the two strangers. I knew, without having to be told, that the stranger was tall and had a cleft in his chin.

  I stood for a long time watching the brown water flowing along the furrow. And I thought of how much water had flowed down all the rivers and under all the bridges of the world since I had last stood on that spot, as a child.

  The roses clambering over the wire-netting shed no heady perfumes.

  The Brothers

  It is true saying that man may scheme, but that God has the last word (Oom Schalk Lourens said).

  And it was no different with Krisjan Lategan. He had one aim, and that was to make sure that his farm should remain the home of the Lategans from one generation to the next until the end of the world. This would be in about two hundred years, according to the way in which a church elder, who was skilled in Biblical prophecy, had worked it out. It would be on a Sunday morning.

  Krisjan Lategan wanted his whole family around him, so that they could all stand up together on the Last Day. There was to be none of that rushing around to look for Lategans who had wandered off into distant parts. Especially with the Last Day being a Sunday and all. Krisjan Lategan was particular that a solemn occasion should not be spoilt by the bad language that always went with searching for stray cattle on a morning when you had to trek.

  Afterwards, when they brought the telegraph up as far as Niet­verdiend, and they showed the church elder how it worked, the elder said that he did not give the world a full two hundred years anymore. And when in Zeerust he heard a talking machine that could sing songs and speak words just through your turning a handle, the elder said that the end of the world was now quite near.

  And he said it almost as though he was glad.

  It was then that old Krisjan Lategan set about the construction of the family vault at the end of his farm. It was the kind of vault that you see on some farms in the Cape. There was a low wall round it, like for a sheep fold, and the vault was only a few feet below the level of the ground, and you walked down steps to a wooden door fastened with a chain. Inside were tamboetie-wood trestles for the coffins to go on. The trestles were painted with tar, to keep away the white ants.

  It was a fine vault. Farmers came from many miles away to admire it. And, as always happens in such cases, after their first feelings of awe had worn off, the visitors would make remarks which, in the parts of the Marico near the Bechuanaland border, regularly aroused guffaws.

  They said, yes, it was quite a nice house, but where was the chimney? They also said that if you got up in the middle of the night and reached your hand under the bed – well, the vault wasn’t a properly fixed-up kind of vault at all.

  The remark Hans van Tonder made was also regarded as having a lot of class to it. Referring to the tar on the trestles, he said he couldn’t understand why old Krisjan Lategan should be so fussy about keeping the white ants out. “When you lie in your coffin, it’s not by ants that you get eaten up,” Hans van Tonder said.

  Krisjan Lategan’s neighbours had a lot of things of this nature to say about his vault when it was newly constructed. All the same, not one of them would have been anxious to go to the vault alone at night after Krisjan Lategan had been laid to rest in it.

  And yet all Krisjan Lategan’s plans came to nothing. Shortly after his death certain unusual events occurred on his farm, as a result of which one of his two sons came to an untimely end, and his corpse was placed in the vault in a coffin that was much too long. And the other son fled so far out of the Marico that it would certainly not be possible to find him again before the Last Day. And even then, on the Day of Judgement, he would not be likely to push himself to the front to any extent.

  Everybody in the Bushveld knew of the bitterness that there was between old Krisjan Lategan’s two sons, Doors and Lodewyk, who were in all things so unlike each other. At their father’s death the two brothers were in their twenties. Neither was married. Doors was a few years older than Lodewyk. For a long time the only bond between them seemed to have been their mutual enmity.

  Lodewyk, the younger one, was tall and good-looking, and his nature was adventurous. The elder brother, Doors, was a hunchback. He had short legs and unnaturally broad shoulders. He was credited with great strength. Because of his grotesque shape, the natives told stories about him that had to do with witchcraft, and that could not be true.

  At his father’s funeral Doors, with his short stature and the shapeless hump on his back, looked particularly ungainly among the other pall-bearers, all straight and upstanding men. During the simple service before the open doors of the vault a child burst out crying. It was something of a scandal that the child wept out of terror of Doors Lategan’s hunched figure, and not out of sorrow for the departed.

  Soon afterwards Lodewyk Lategan left the farm for the diamond diggings at Doornpan. Before that the brothers had quarrelled violently in the mealie-lands. The natives said that the quar
rel had been about what cattle Lodewyk could take with him to the diggings. When Lodewyk went it was with the new wagon and the best span of oxen. And Doors said that if he ever returned to the farm he would kill him.

  “I will yet make you remember those words,” Lodewyk an­s­wered.

  In this spirit Doors and Lodewyk parted. Tant Alie, old Krisjan Lategan’s widow, remained on at the farm with her elder son, Doors. She was an ageing woman with no force of character. Tant Alie had always been considered a bit soft in the head. She came of a Cape family of which quite a few members were known to be ‘simpel’, although nobody, of course, thought any the less of them on that account. They belonged to a sheep district, Tant Alie’s fami­ly, and we of the Marico, who were cattle farmers, said that for a sheep farmer it was even a help if his brain was not too sound.

  But whatever Tant Alie might have thought and felt about the estrangement that was between her sons, she did not ever discuss the matter. Moreover it is certain that they would have taken no notice of any efforts on her part at reconciling them.

  Lodewyk left for the diamond fields in the company of Flippie Geel, who had a piece of Government land at Koedoesrand that he was supposed to improve. Flippie Geel was a good deal older than Lodewyk Lategan. For that reason it seems all the more surprising that he should have helped Lodewyk in his subsequent foolish actions. Perhaps it was because Flippie Geel found that easier than work.

  From what came out afterwards, it would appear that Lode­wyk Lategan and Flippie Geel did not dig much on their claim. But they put in a lot of time drinking brandy, which they bought with the money Lodewyk got from selling his trek-oxen, a pair at a time.

  And when he was in his cups, Lodewyk would devise elaborate schemes, each more absurd than the last, for getting even with his brother Doors, who, he said, had defrauded him of his share of the inheritance.