“I hope you deposited the State revenues in the Reserve Bank, in a proper manner,” At Naudé said, winking at us, but impressed all the same.
“There was no Reserve Bank in those days,” Oupa Bekker said, “or any other kind of banks either, in the Republic of Ohrigstad. No, I just kept the national treasury in a stocking under my mattress. It was the safest place, of course.”
Johnny Coen put the next question.
“What was the most difficult part of being Finance Minister, Oupa?” he asked. “I suppose it was making the budget balance?”
“Money was the hardest thing,” Oupa Bekker said, sighing.
“It still is,” Chris Welman interjected. “You don’t need to have been a Finance Minister, either, to know that.”
“But, of course, it wasn’t as bad as today,” Oupa Bekker went on. “Being Minister of Finance, I mean. For instance, we didn’t need to worry about finding money for education, because there just wasn’t any, of course.”
Jurie Steyn coughed in a significant kind of way, then, but Oupa Bekker ignored him.
“I don’t think,” he went on, “that we would have stood for education in the Ohrigstad Republic. We knew we were better off without it. And then there was no need to spend money on railways and harbours, because there weren’t any, either. Or hospitals. We lived a healthy life in those days, except maybe for lions. And if you died from a lion, there wasn’t much of you left over that could be taken to a hospital. Of course, we had to spend a good bit of money on defence, in those days. Gunpowder and lead, and oil to make the springs of our Ou-Sannas work more smoothly. You see, we were expecting trouble any day from Paul Kruger and the Doppers. But it was hard for me to know how to work out a popular budget, especially as there were only seventeen income-tax payers in the whole of the Republic. I thought of imposing a tax on the President’s state coach, even. I found that that suggestion was very popular with the income-tax paying group. But you have no idea how much it annoyed the President.
“I imposed all sorts of taxes afterwards, which nobody would have to pay. These taxes didn’t bring in much in the way of money, of course. But they were very popular, all the same. And I can still remember how popular my budget was, the year I put a very heavy tax on opium. I had heard somewhere about an opium tax. Naturally, of course, I did not expect this tax to bring in a penny. But I knew how glad the burghers of the Ohrigstad Republic would be, each one of them, to think that there was a tax that they escaped. In the end I had to repeal the tax on opium, however. That was when one of our seventeen income-tax payers threatened to emigrate to the Cape. This income-tax payer had a yellowish complexion and sloping eyes, and ran the only laundry in the Ohrigstad Republic.”
Oupa Bekker was still talking about the measures he introduced to counteract inflation in the early days of the Republic of Ohrigstad, when the lorry from Bekkersdal arrived in a cloud of dust. The next few minutes were taken up with a hurried sorting of letters and packages, all of which proceeded to the background noises of clanking milk-cans. Oupa Bekker left when the lorry arrived, since he was expecting neither correspondence nor a milk-can. The lorry-driver and his assistant seated themselves on the riempies bench which the old man had vacated. Jurie Steyn’s wife brought them in coffee.
“You know,” Jurie Steyn said to Chris Welman, in between putting sealing wax on a letter he was getting ready for the mailbag. “I often wonder what is going to happen to Oupa Bekker – such an old man and all, and still such a liar. All that Finance Minister rubbish of his. How they ever appointed him an ouderling in the church, I don’t know. For one thing, I mean, he couldn’t have been born, at the time of the Ohrigstad Republic.” Jurie reflected for a few moments. “Or could he?”
“I don’t know,” Chris Welman answered truthfully.
A little later the lorry-driver and his assistant departed. We heard them putting water in the radiator. Some time afterwards we heard them starting up the engine, noisily, the driver swearing quite a lot to himself.
It was when the lorry had already started to move off that Jurie Steyn remembered about the registered letter on which he had put the seals. He grabbed up the letter and was over the counter in a single bound.
Chris Welman and I followed him to the door. We watched Jurie Steyn for a considerable distance, streaking along in the sun behind the lorry and shouting and waving the letter in front of him, and jumping over thorn-bushes.
“Just like a Mchopi runner,” I heard Chris Welman say.
A Bekkersdal Marathon
At Naudé, who had a wireless set, came into Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer, where we were sitting waiting for the railway lorry from Bekkersdal, and gave us the latest news. He said that the newest thing in Europe was that young people there were going in for non-stop dancing. It was called marathon dancing, At Naudé told us, and those young people were trying to break the record for who could remain on their feet longest, dancing.
We listened for a while to what At Naudé had to say, and then we suddenly remembered a marathon event that had taken place in the little dorp of Bekkersdal – almost in our midst, you could say. What was more, there were quite a number of us sitting in Jurie Steyn’s post office who had actually taken part in that non-stop affair, and without knowing that we were breaking records, and without expecting any sort of a prize for it, either.
We discussed that affair at considerable length and from all angles, and we were still talking about it when the lorry came. And we agreed that it had been in several respects an unusual occurrence. We also agreed that it was questionable if we could have carried off things so successfully that day, if it had not been for Billy Robertse.
You see, our organist at Bekkersdal was Billy Robertse. He had once been a sailor and had come to the Bushveld some years before, travelling on foot. His belongings, fastened in a red handkerchief, were slung over his shoulder on a stick. Billy Robertse was journeying in that fashion for the sake of his health. He suffered from an unfortunate complaint for which he had at regular intervals to drink something out of a black bottle that he always carried handy in his jacket pocket.
Billy Robertse would even keep that bottle beside him in the organist’s gallery in case of a sudden attack. And if the hymn the predikant gave out had many verses, you could be sure that about halfway through Billy Robertse would bring the bottle up to his mouth, leaning sideways towards what was in it. And he would put several extra twirls into the second part of the hymn.
When he first applied for the position of organist in the Bekkersdal church, Billy Robertse told the meeting of deacons that he had learnt to play the organ in a cathedral in Northern Europe. Several deacons felt, then, that they could not favour his application. They said that the cathedral sounded too Papist, the way Billy Robertse described it, with a dome 300 feet high and with marble apostles. But it was lucky for Billy Robertse that he was able to mention, at the following combined meeting of elders and deacons, that he had also played the piano in a South American dance hall, of which the manager was a Presbyterian. He asked the meeting to overlook his unfortunate past, saying that he had had a hard life, and anybody could make mistakes. In any case, he had never cared much for the Romish atmosphere of the cathedral, he said, and had been happier in the dance hall.
In the end, Billy Robertse got the appointment. But in his sermons for several Sundays after that the predikant, Dominee Welthagen, spoke very strongly against the evils of dance halls. He described those places of awful sin in such burning words that at least one young man went to see Billy Robertse, privately, with a view to taking lessons in playing the piano.
But Billy Robertse was a good musician. And he took a deep interest in his work. And he said that when he sat down on the organist’s stool behind the pulpit, and his fingers were flying over the keyboards, and he was pulling out the stops, and his feet were pressing down the notes that sent the deep bass tones through the pipes – then he felt that he could play all day, he said.
I don�
��t suppose he guessed that he would one day be put to the test, however.
It all happened through Dominee Welthagen one Sunday morning going into a trance in the pulpit. And we did not realise that he was in a trance. It was an illness that overtook him in a strange and sudden fashion.
At each service the predikant, after reading a passage from the Bible, would lean forward with his hand on the pulpit rail and give out the number of the hymn we had to sing. For years his manner of conducting the service had been exactly the same. He would say, for instance: “We will now sing Psalm 82, verses 1 to 4.” Then he would allow his head to sink forward onto his chest and he would remain rigid, as though in prayer, until the last notes of the hymn died away in the church.
Now, on that particular morning, just after he had announced the number of the psalm, without mentioning what verses, Dominee Welthagen again took a firm grip on the pulpit rail and allowed his head to sink forward onto his breast. We did not realise that he had fallen into a trance of a peculiar character that kept his body standing upright while his mind was a blank. We learnt that only later.
In the meantime, while the organ was playing the opening bars, we began to realise that Dominee Welthagen had not indicated how many verses we had to sing. But he would discover his mistake, we thought, after we had been singing for a few minutes.
All the same, one or two of the younger members of the congregation did titter, slightly, when they took up their hymnbooks. For Dominee Welthagen had given out Psalm 119. And everybody knows that Psalm 119 has 176 verses.
This was a church service that will never be forgotten in Bekkersdal.
We sang the first verse and then the second and then the third. When we got to about the sixth verse and the minister still gave no sign that it would be the last, we assumed that he wished us to sing the first eight verses. For, if you open your hymnbook, you’ll see that Psalm 119 is divided into sets of eight verses, each ending with the word “Pouse.”
We ended the last notes of verse eight with more than an ordinary number of turns and twirls, confident that at any moment Dominee Welthagen would raise his head and let us know that we could sing “Amen.”
It was when the organ started up very slowly and solemnly with the music for verse nine that a real feeling of disquiet overcame the congregation. But, of course, we gave no sign of what went on in our minds. We held Dominee Welthagen in too much veneration.
Nevertheless, I would rather not say too much about our feelings, when verse followed verse and Pouse succeeded Pouse, and still Dominee Welthagen made no sign that we had sung long enough, or that there was anything unusual in what he was demanding of us.
After they had recovered from their first surprise, the members of the church council conducted themselves in a most exemplary manner. Elders and deacons tiptoed up and down the aisles, whispering words of reassurance to such members of the congregation, men as well as women, who gave signs of wanting to panic.
At one stage it looked as though we were going to have trouble from the organist. That was when Billy Robertse, at the end of the 34th verse, held up his black bottle and signalled quietly to the elders to indicate that his medicine was finished. At the end of the 35th verse he made signals of a less quiet character, and again at the end of the 36th verse. That was when Elder Landsman tiptoed out of the church and went round to the konsistorie, where the Nagmaal wine was kept. When Elder Landsman came back into the church he had a long black bottle half hidden under his manel. He took the bottle up to the organist’s gallery, still walking on tiptoe.
At verse 61 there was almost a breakdown. That was when a message came from the back of the organ, where Koster Claassen and the assistant verger, whose task it was to turn the handle that kept the organ supplied with wind, were in a state near to exhaustion. So it was Deacon Cronjé’s turn to go tiptoeing out of the church. Deacon Cronjé was head-warder at the local gaol. When he came back it was with three burly native convicts in striped jerseys, who also went through the church on tiptoe. They arrived just in time to take over the handle from Koster Claassen and the assistant verger.
At verse 98 the organist again started making signals about his medicine. Once more Elder Landsman went round to the konsistorie. This time he was accompanied by another elder and a deacon, and they stayed away somewhat longer than the time when Elder Landsman had gone on his own. On their return the deacon bumped into a small hymnbook table at the back of the church. Perhaps it was because the deacon was a fat, red-faced man, and not used to tiptoeing.
At verse 124 the organist signalled again, and the same three members of the church council filed out to the konsistorie, the deacon walking in front this time.
It was about then that the pastor of the Full Gospel Apostolic Faith Church, about whom Dominee Welthagen had in the past used almost as strong language as about the Pope, came up to the front gate of the church to see what was afoot. He lived near our church and, having heard the same hymn tune being played over and over for about eight hours, he was a very amazed man. Then he saw the door of the konsistorie open, and two elders and a deacon coming out, walking on tiptoe – they having apparently forgotten that they were not in church, then. When the pastor saw one of the elders hiding a black bottle under his manel, a look of understanding came over his features. The pastor walked off, shaking his head.
At verse 152 the organist signalled again. This time Elder Landsman and the other elder went out alone. The deacon stayed behind on the deacon’s bench, apparently in deep thought. The organist signalled again, for the last time, at verse 169. So you can imagine how many visits the two elders made to the konsistorie altogether.
The last verse came, and the last line of the last verse. This time it had to be “Amen.” Nothing could stop it. I would rather not describe the state that the congregation was in. And by then the three native convicts, red stripes and all, were, in the Bakhatla tongue, threatening mutiny. “Aa-m-e-e-n” came from what sounded like less than a score of voices, hoarse with singing.
The organ music ceased.
Maybe it was the sudden silence that at last brought Dominee Welthagen out of his long trance. He raised his head and looked slowly about him. His gaze travelled over his congregation and then, looking at the windows, he saw that it was night. We understood right away what was going on in Dominee Welthagen’s mind. He thought he had just come into the pulpit, and that this was the beginning of the evening service. We realised that, during all the time we had been singing, the predikant had been in a state of unconsciousness.
Once again Dominee Welthagen took a firm grip of the pulpit rail. His head again started drooping forward onto his breast. But before he went into a trance for the second time, he gave out the hymn for the evening service. “We will,” Dominee Welthagen announced, “sing Psalm 119.”
Psycho-analysis
“Koos Nienaber got a letter from his daughter, Minnie, last week,” Jurie Steyn announced to several of us sitting in his voorkamer that served as the Drogevlei post office. “It’s two years now that she has been working in an office in Johannesburg. You wouldn’t think it. Two years …”
“What was in the letter?” At Naudé asked, coming to the point.
“Well,” Jurie Steyn began, “Minnie says that …”
Jurie Steyn was quick to sense our amusement.
“If that’s how you carry on,” he announced, “I won’t tell you anything. I know what you are all thinking, laughing in that silly way. Well, just let one of you try and be postmaster, like me, in between milking and ploughing and getting the wrong statements from the creamery and the pigs rooting up the sweet-potatoes – not to talk about the calving season, even – and then see how much time you’ll have left over for steaming open and reading other people’s letters.”
Johnny Coen, who was young and was more than a little interested in Minnie Nienaber, hastened to set Jurie Steyn’s mind at rest.
“You know, we make the same sort of joke about every postmaster
in the Bushveld,” Johnny Coen said. “We don’t mean anything by it. It’s a very old joke. Now, if we were living in Johannesburg, like Minnie Nienaber, we might perhaps be able to think out some newer sort of things to say –”
“What we would say,” At Naudé interrupted – At Naudé always being up-to-date, since he has a wireless and reads a newspaper every week – “What we would say is that you sublet your post office as a hideout for the Jeppe gang.”
Naturally, we did not know what the Jeppe gang was. At Naudé took quite a long time to explain. When he had finished, Oupa Bekker, who is the oldest inhabitant of the Marico Bushveld, said that there seemed to him to be something spirited about the Jeppe gang, which reminded him a lot of his own youth in the Pilanesberg area of the Waterberg District. Oupa Bekker said that he had several times, lately, thought of visiting his youngest grand-daughter in Johannesburg. Maybe they could teach him a few things in Johannesburg, he said. And maybe, also, he could teach them a thing or two.
But all this talk was getting us away from Minnie Nienaber’s letter. And once again it was Johnny Coen that brought the subject round to Jurie Steyn’s first remark.
“It must be that Koos Nienaber told you what was in his daughter’s letter,” Johnny Coen said. “Koos Nienaber must have come round here and told you. Otherwise you would never have known, I mean. You couldn’t possibly have known.”
That was what had happened, Jurie Steyn acknowledged. He went on to say that he was grateful to Johnny Coen for not harbouring those unworthy suspicions against him that were sometimes entertained by people living in the Groot Marico who did not have Johnny Coen’s advantages of education and worldly experience. We knew that he just said that to flatter Johnny Coen, who had once been a railway shunter at Ottoshoop.
Thereupon Jurie Steyn acquainted us in detail with the contents of Minnie Nienaber’s letter, as retailed to him by her father, Koos Nie-naber.
The Complete Voorkamer Stories Page 2