Jurie Steyn knew all that. It was like the time the Government audit-or came from Pretoria and said that Jurie Steyn’s post office accounts were all mucked up, and the Government auditor just wouldn’t listen to all that Jurie Steyn had to tell him about the Mtosas dressed in old blankets that came to buy stamps and about the trouble he was having in the milking shed with his new separator. Jurie Steyn knew that the world was like that.
But for that young schoolmaster to come and sneer at him now, Jurie Steyn thought, and all for nothing. Well, the cheek of it. In any case, he wouldn’t be in the schoolmaster’s boots for anything. Surely, the schoolmaster must know that Pauline Gerber had a father who in single combat with a berg luiperd (and with only two dogs to help him) twisted that berg luiperd’s left foot off. And Pauline Gerber also had an elder brother who had once bitten – But no, Jurie Steyn would rather not think of that. All he felt was that he wouldn’t for anything be in young Vermaak’s shoes. Not with the relatives Pauline Gerber had, that was.
And here was the schoolmaster talking in a sneering way about the impossibility of geological science having named something or other after him, Jurie Steyn. Maybe geological science had already named that thing after him, Jurie Steyn thought, and he hadn’t come to hear of it, yet, seeing how slow news from the outside world was in reaching the Marico Bushveld.
Jurie Steyn leaned further than ever over his post office counter, then.
“Whatever Oupa Bekker is going to say,” Jurie Steyn announced, “I’m certain he’s right.”
“Of course, I’m right,” Oupa Bekker declared, sure of himself but at the same time trying not to look self-satisfied. “I tell you, I’ve seen those footprints. And Jurassic my foot … I was almost going to say my footprints. Seeing that Gysbert van Tonder thought it was the schoolmaster’s footprints. But how old did you say they were, Meneer Vermaak?”
The schoolmaster told him. Jurassic, the schoolmaster said. Hundreds of thousands and millions of years. What you could practically call Mesozoic, the schoolmaster said, rolling the word appreciatively over his tongue. And the distance that those footprints were apart. It was obviously before man. Some being akin to man, maybe. They had a lot in common with a human being’s footprints, all right. And the Jurassic was also rich in ammonites and cycads.
Oupa Bekker gave a short laugh, this time, that no one joined in.
“I never saw who made those footprints,” Oupa Bekker said. “But I saw them. And I recognised them right away as Bushman footprints. And if you want to call a Bushman a human being, well, that’s up to you, of course. I’m not saying anything. And why they are still there, in the arm of the Molopo, those footprints, is because there hasn’t been any rain, there, for over a hundred years. No real rain, that is.
“And why those footprints are so far apart is because that was just the time when the percussion cap came in, to take the place of the flintlock that the old Boers used in their voorlaaiers. And with the percussion cap in, and all, it was only natural that the Bushman would have to take longer strides. I mean, much longer strides than when it was just an old flintlock that he was trying to get away from. Has your Dr Lesnitzky ever thought of that one?”
And so Oupa Bekker put young Vermaak in his place, all right, Jur-assic or no Jurassic. As we knew that Oupa Bekker would, of course, the moment we saw how his eye glittered. We were all very pleased to see the schoolmaster brought back to earth – and back to the present – out of his millions of years ago. Now let young Vermaak try and explain away a few immediate things, we said to ourselves. Let him try and explain about Pauline Gerber, for one thing. We were willing – and even anxious – to hear.
That was when Jurie Steyn’s wife came in from the kitchen with our coffee. And to our surprise she was most kind to young Vermaak. It was something we couldn’t understand, somehow. The way she told him not to worry, when she handed him his coffee. It was as though she knew all about Pauline Gerber, and forgave him for it. It was as though she forgave him much …
The way Jurie Steyn’s wife spoke to young Vermaak, you would almost think that it was he that was in trouble.
Day of Wrath
It was what At Naudé had read in the newspapers.
Somewhere in an overseas country the people in that part had come together in a barn to wait for the end of the world, which a holy woman had gone out of her way to prophesy for them would be quite soon.
“They stopped work and sold their land for – well, I don’t quite remember, now, how much they got for it, a morgen,” At Naudé said. “But it was quite cheap. And so they just sat in the barn, waiting for the Day of Judgment.”
Then Gysbert van Tonder said he wondered what those lands were like that the holy woman’s followers had sold. Maybe it was just brak soil, and with ganna bushes. Well, that sort of ground you could keep, Gysbert van Tonder said. He had had experience of just that kind of lands. And what about turf-soil, now, he asked – the sticky kind? There was a thing for you, too, he observed.
Thereupon Chris Welman said that if those people sitting in that overseas barn, there, wanted land so cheap that it was almost nothing a morgen – certainly not more than ten pounds a morgen, with two boreholes thrown in – then he himself was just the right man for them to come and talk to. Did the newspaper give the address of that barn, perhaps?
In the slight altercation that ensued between Gysbert van Tonder and Chris Welman (Gysbert van Tonder contending that he had thought of it first and that Chris Welman had no right to come and intrude, talking about ten pounds a morgen for a piece of koppie that you couldn’t keep a goat alive on, not unless you fed the goat an old hat or a piece of shirt, every so often), At Naudé was able to explain, several times, that they had missed the whole point of what he was talking about. It wasn’t the price of ground a morgen that the newspaper story dealt with so much as the preparations that those people were making for the Day of Judgment.
“The End of the World,” At Naudé stated majestically. “Die laaste der dagen.”
He knew it would sound more solemn if he said it in Bible Nederlands instead of just in Afrikaans.
But by that time Chris Welman was saying to Gysbert van Tonder that Gysbert was pretty much like a goat himself, the way he had come butting in, and Gysbert van Tonder was saying that the way Chris Welman’s trousers looked from the back, it would appear as though Chris had already been feeding part of his trousers to the goats.
“Anyway, where’s your shirt buttons?” Chris Welman asked of Gysbert van Tonder, sarcastically. “I suppose the ostriches ate them?”
We felt that this was an unfortunate quarrel, between Gysbert van Tonder and Chris Welman. We sensed that it was the kind of argument that wouldn’t get either of them anywhere. Moreover, when it came to a matter of dress – or, rather, to a question of tabulating things that weren’t there – why, we knew that we were none of us immune from thoughtless criticism.
The jagged missiles that Gysbert van Tonder and Chris Welman were hurling at each other on the score of the respective shortcomings in their personal attire – well, a rusty old piece of that kind of weapon could wound any one of us, sitting in Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer. And even if it wasn’t aimed at you, and even if it got you only glancingly, it could make you feel bruised, all the same. More than one of us shifted uncomfortably on his riempies chair, then.
But it was when Chris Welman was talking about when Gysbert van Tonder had had a haircut last that Oupa Bekker took a firm hand in the proceedings.
We were more than a little surprised that, in spite of his deafness, Oupa Bekker should have followed the argument so well. We had noticed that about Oupa Bekker before, however – that he didn’t really miss much about what was going on: not when he was personally affected, that was.
“At Naudé has been talking about Judgment Day,” Oupa Bekker said severely, at the same time moving his good veldskoen forward, so as partly to hide the place in his other veldskoen that was patched with a piece of rubb
er tubing. “And on the Day of Judgment we will none of us be judged by the clothes we’re wearing, at the time. We’ll be judged by just what we are.”
From the way Oupa Bekker said it, it sounded that that would be bad enough.
So Chris Welman said that he certainly hoped, for Gysbert van Tonder’s own sake, that on the Last Day Gysbert would not be judged by the kind of clothes he was wearing. If Gysbert’s clothes already looked like that now, Chris Welman said, he would rather not think how they would look on the Last Day. He just couldn’t imagine anything more sinful, Chris Welman added. Not just off-hand he couldn’t, Chris Welman said.
Before Gysbert van Tonder could think of a suitable answer, Oupa Bekker went on to say that what really was sinful was the way Chris Welman had talked of wanting to sell his ground – asking ten pounds a morgen for it – to those people in a foreign country who didn’t know any better.
“Religious people,” Oupa Bekker said. “Sitting there in a barn because their prophetess woman had told them that it was the End of the World. And Protestant people, too, by the sound of it.”
We agreed with Oupa Bekker that they were Protestants, by the sound of it.
“And just because Chris Welman wants to trek to Rhodesia, as we all know,” Oupa Bekker announced, finally, “he doesn’t ask even if they’re Catholics, first, before he thinks of selling his farm to them, which we know isn’t worth ten pounds a morgen, just because he wants to go to Rhodesia.”
Chris Welman could only say that for those people to have his farm was better than their sitting in a barn, anyway. Whereupon Gysbert van Tonder said that he wasn’t so sure.
Gysbert van Tonder also said that if Chris Welman got ten pounds a morgen for his farm, then it would be the end of the world.
Oupa Bekker agreed with Gysbert van Tonder. Oupa Bekker said that he knew Chris Welman’s farm in the old days, when it was just concession ground. And he wouldn’t be sure if he didn’t even prefer that ground like it was in the old days, before Chris Welman had made what he called improvements on it, Oupa Bekker added.
It seemed queer that Oupa Bekker should be so very much against Chris Welman. But it was only when Oupa Bekker spoke again that we understood something of the reason for it. And we also realised in a deeper manner the truth of what we had in the course of time come to understand about Oupa Bekker’s deafness: that Oupa Bekker was hardly at all deaf when there was talk going on in which he was personally affected.
“Take my own little place, now,” Oupa Bekker said. “There it lies, on both sides of Pappegaai Poort. There’s a bit of ground for you, now. For somebody that wants to make a new start, and that isn’t afraid of a bit of hard work. Catholic or Protestant, there’s now a –”
But Oupa Bekker didn’t get any further. For by that time we were all laughing.
“Well, I only hope that on the Last Day I’m not found on your farm, Oupa Bekker,” Chris Welman said. “Not when it comes to being judged, that is. And no matter what sort of clothes I had on, either. Even if I was wearing my black Nagmaal manel, I wouldn’t fancy my chances much, if I was found walking on Judgment Day on any part of your farm. Not with all that kakiebos and those erosion sloots, I wouldn’t.”
All the same, it was strange to think that Oupa Bekker, at his age, should also be toying with the idea of trekking to Rhodesia. Otherwise he would never want to sell his farm. It must be that Oupa Bekker had also heard about how much you could make out of tobacco, in Rhodesia. Perhaps he had also heard about how glad the Rhodesian Government was to have Afrikaners trekking in there, so much so that they were asking questions about it in the Rhodesian Legislative Assembly almost every week.
It was only after At Naudé had spoken for some time again, trying to give us a clear picture of that prophetess woman and her followers waiting in the barn in their foreign language for the Last Day, that we began to understand properly what it meant.
And we started to think of Gabriel’s trumpet, then. And of the book in the tenth chapter of Revelations that St. John wrote. And of the millions of people, the dead and the living, that would gather at the foot of Mount Zion. And of the vials of wrath. And the fall of Babylon. And the beast with seven heads.
There were things you could not reflect on just lightly.
“I wonder why they were so quick to listen to their prophet woman, the people in that foreign part,” Jurie Steyn commented at length, scratching his head at the same time. “I mean, there must have been a reason why they heeded her words and sold up so quick. After all, there was nothing that she could prophesy to them that could be half as bad as what you can read for yourself in the last few pages of the Good Book. Things like the passing of the first world in pools of fire. I have read it more than once, for myself, in a time of drought. And it has brought me a good deal of comfort, too, in a time of drought.”
Well, we were in entire agreement with Jurie Steyn, there. When there had been no rain in the Marico for three years, we said, and the last water in the borehole was drying up – if you could even call it water, with all that brack in it – well, it was comforting, we acknowledged, to sit on one’s front stoep and to read of the Day of Wrath and of the second seal being opened.
It made you feel quite happy, then, we said, to think of all the awful things that were going to happen to the world; and to think that it was all just around the corner, too, from the way the holy St. John spoke.
We were suddenly able to understand something of what must have been going on in the minds of those foreign people, who listened to their prophetess woman. Seeing that we were farmers ourselves, we understood.
“I think I see what you’re getting at, Jurie,” At Naudé remarked, after a while. “You get a bellyful of it, sometimes, don’t you? After all, even if there isn’t a drought, you do suddenly find, when you take a look over your farm, including the improvements you’ve made on it –”
“Especially the improvements,” Chris Welman interjected bitterly, “no matter what Oupa Bekker says about them –”
“Anyway, you do get the feeling,” At Naudé continued, “Revelations or no Revelations – that you’ve just had a bellyful.”
Until that moment we had not understood, properly, why it was that there was so much solace to be found in the last twenty chapters of the Good Book, ending up with “der volken daarin brengen.”
If it was the End of the World, then, at least, the End of the World would be a change. And the lure of selling up and going to Rhodesia did not have much to do with tobacco-planting, but it was a thing as old as Africa.
“It’s funny, now, about Policansky,” Gysbert van Tonder remarked. “But the last time I saw David Policansky, he told me he was looking for a buyer for his store. He wanted to trek out somewhere, right away from Bekkersdal, he said. And you know what – from the way that David Policansky spoke, it sounded almost as though he had also been reading the New Testament, for drawing comfort. He wasn’t talking much different from what we’re talking now. He would sell out quite cheap, he said, too.”
Language of Flowers
“No, I don’t think that’s right,” Gysbert van Tonder declared, gazing with marked disfavour at the bowl of nasturtiums in Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer. “Now it’s roses. Next it will be violets, then – then –” Gysbert van Tonder hesitated. He had come to the end of his list of the names of flowers.
“Hollyhocks,” At Naudé said, helping him out, “geraniums, fuchsias, katjiepierings, daisies –”
“Yes, all that sort of thing,” Gysbert van Tonder acknowledged. “But how’s it you can say them straight off, like that?” Gysbert van Tonder’s tone was suspicious.
“Well, some of those flower names I knew myself, in any case,” At Naudé confessed, modestly. “Others I have heard from time to time over the wireless – you know, those weekly talks by the man who calls himself Neef Marius. He talks to you about how to be happy in your little front garden and about how to do greenhouse work. Not that I know what greenhouse wor
k is, by the way.”
We said we didn’t know, either.
“Greenhouse work or any other sort of work,” Jurie Steyn’s wife said, then, coming in with the coffee and trying to be funny.
“And if your own little front garden isn’t big enough for flowers or for greenhouse work,” At Naudé went on, ignoring Jurie Steyn’s wife so pointedly that it was almost as though she wasn’t in the voorkamer at all, “then this Neef Marius explains to you about what to grow in hanging baskets on your stoep, or in pots on your window-sill.”
We said that was a lot of nonsense. It might be all right for people living in cities, we said, who didn’t know any better, and who didn’t care what they listened to, sitting back in their city chairs.
But the moment a city person got up out of his chair and rested his cigar on the edge of a saucer on a tall stand, like you saw in the bioscopes, we said, and he started putting a seed or two in a hanging basket or in a graceful pot, half full of mellow loam, in a sheltered, sunny corner, like Neef Marius told him to do – that was when the city person’s troubles would start, we said.
But we also said that a city person – from what we knew of a city person – would be far too shrewd ever to act on what Neef Marius recommended. A city person would have too acute a judgment ever to get up out of his armchair, once he was properly settled in it, we said. Least of all would he get up to go and pinch off the side-shoots of a chrysanthemum growing in a pot.
And we had had so much to say that Jurie Steyn’s wife had gone back into the kitchen again before we noticed that At Naudé was sitting there – if not in a city armchair then at least on a riempiesbank, next to Oupa Bekker – with his pipe in one hand and with no cup of coffee in the other hand. Jurie Steyn’s wife must have overlooked At Naudé, somehow, by mistake.
The Complete Voorkamer Stories Page 24