Oupa Bekker said that he thought that was a very peculiar way for a veldkornet to talk. Never mind about wanting to call Hubrecht Willemse the Terror of the Molopo, Oupa Bekker thought, why, he was enough of a Terror of the Marico. Oupa Bekker tried to suggest something along those lines to the veldkornet.
“Well, if he gets into the Molopo, then it’s their look-out,” was all the veldkornet would say.
The veldkornet wasn’t even much interested, Oupa Bekker said, in the veldskoens that Hubrecht Willemse had left behind, and to which Japie Uys directed the veldkornet’s attention, saying that if the veldkornet smelt them, it might help to put him on the trail of the escaped convict.
“But the veldkornet said that wouldn’t help much,” Oupa Bekker went on. “When once Hubrecht Willemse had got across the Molopo, it wasn’t so very far from there to the Bechuanaland border. Yes, he wouldn’t be at all surprised if Hubrecht Willemse was almost out of the Transvaal by now.”
Oupa Bekker said that, in spite of his feet, Japie Uys laughed, then. You couldn’t get to the Bechuanaland border that way, Japie Uys said. Not at that time of the year, you couldn’t. The only way was through the Renosterpoort. And from where he was sitting on the stump, Japie Uys pointed out the Renosterpoort to the veldkornet.
“That scoundrel Willemse will have to come right back here, again, along that same road,” Japie Uys said, gleefully. “He’ll have to. There’s no other way. And that’s when you’ll get him. The blisters and skinned places on my feet don’t feel quite so sore, now. What’s more, Hubrecht Willemse will be coming past here again, quite soon.”
Just then another cracking sound came from the hollowed-out tree-trunk. This time it was the veldkornet that jumped up suddenly, Oupa Bekker said.
“And later on that same afternoon it was proved to us that Hubrecht Willemse did have those ghostly powers that he claimed,” Oupa Bekker added. “For Hubrecht Willemse came back again along that road, as Japie Uys had said he would. And from a long way off we pointed him out to the veldkornet. But the veldkornet just couldn’t see him at all.
“And when, afterwards, Hubrecht Willemse got so near that the veldkornet just had to see him, the veldkornet said that it didn’t look like Hubrecht Willemse to him in the least.
“It looked more like a Senator he knew, the veldkornet remarked when Hubrecht Willemse had gone past, and the sound of galloping hooves was dying in the distance.”
Border Bad Man
Gysbert van Tonder was talking about the new young mounted policeman who went galloping past while he and Frits Nienaber were outspanned alongside of the Government Road, a few days before. It was partly at the off-mule’s suggestion that they had outspanned at about that spot.
“The off-mule stood right up on his hind legs,” Gysbert van Tonder said, “to show us how tired he was. We knew that the next thing the off-mule would do, on account of his being fatigued, would be to drag the mule-cart off the road and right up the side of the koppie, and with nobody to help him, either. For the steeper a koppie is, the better that mule likes to drag a cart up over it, when he’s real tired.”
And it was while Gysbert van Tonder and Frits Nienaber were out-spanned by the side of the road that the new policeman on border patrol went past.
“He didn’t even notice us,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “We could see that that new policeman was in a hurry to get somewhere. He didn’t even see the mule, I don’t think. Of course, he’s new –”
Then Oupa Bekker mentioned another occasion on which a border patrolman came and assumed duty in the Marico for the first time.
“Of course, I am talking of very long ago, now,” Oupa Bekker said, “and the patrolman’s name was Duvenhage, and we could see that they had explained to him in Pretoria that his most important work would be to put down the awful cattle-smuggling that was going on here, in those days.”
“Oh, yes, in those days, of course,” Gysbert van Tonder said, quickly.
Jurie Steyn took Gysbert van Tonder up at once.
“What do you mean by saying ‘in those days’, like that?” Jurie Steyn asked. “What about that bunch of cattle with wide horns and that are all colours that you’ve got in the camp by the kloof, there, right now? I suppose you’ll tell us next that you bought them on the Johannesburg market. And how’s it Frits Nienaber has about the same-looking collection of beasts on his side of the kloof? One thing I must say, is that the two of you seem to have divided up pretty equally. You seem to have been honest there, anyhow.”
“And I expect that’s why you keep that herd in the kloof,” Chris Welman observed to Gysbert van Tonder sarcastically, “it’s because they are a sort of cows and oxen that don’t like to have people come prying into their affairs.”
“Especially when they’ve still got Bechuanaland Protectorate clay between their hooves,” Jurie Steyn remarked. “Turf-clay.”
So Gysbert van Tonder said that they would have to prove it. And so Jurie Steyn told us what he would have done if he had been a border patrol policeman instead of a postmaster.
And then Gysbert said that if Jurie Steyn sorted out hoofprints in the dust like he sorted letters in his post office then you could bring Bechuanaland cattle across the Convention line in broad daylight.
Thereupon Oupa Bekker said what a queer thing it was that there should be so much jealousy among Marico farmers.
“I mean there isn’t one of us wouldn’t smuggle in a few head of cattle if he got a chance,” Oupa Bekker said, “and yet when you hear of our neighbour doing it – and you yourself didn’t do it, that time – and you picture to yourself a herd of all sorts of cattle crowded against the barbed-wire fence on one side of your neighbour’s farm and sniffing the wind from the Protectorate, and lowing, why, you get pretty mad about it. It’s almost like you’re also pawing the polgras with your hooves, sniffing the wind that blows from Bechuanaland.”
We could not but admit that there was much truth in Oupa Bekker’s words. At the same time – as Chris Welman pointed out, then – there was such a thing as overdoing this cattle-smuggling business. And it was people that overdid it that gave all Marico farmers a bad name, he said.
Gysbert van Tonder sniffed. It was a different type of sniff from the kind Oupa Bekker had been talking about.
“A bad name,” Gysbert van Tonder said, his lip curling, “well, there are some people sitting here in this voorkamer now that would give any district that they stayed in a bad name, just by living in it. If they lived in the Cape Peninsula, it would get a bad name. And you can’t tell me there’s any cattle-smuggling going on in the Cape Peninsula. Unless you can smuggle in cattle off ships.”
Gysbert van Tonder grew thoughtful after that last remark. It was as though he was considering the possibilities.
“But there was a thing, now,” Oupa Bekker said, getting back to the subject of Patrolman Duvenhage, of the old days, “I mean, the Justice Department sending a man who had been on the Illicit Diamond staff at Kimberley to come and keep watch on the Transvaal border. I suppose the Transvaal Government thought that a man who had had a job like that in the Cape must know a thing or two. They didn’t want somebody just raw, I suppose.
“Well, I’ll say this much for Duvenhage. There wasn’t much smuggling being carried on by Marico farmers during the time he was a patrolman. Only, he didn’t stay here very long after there was that trouble about the railway consignment notes.”
Chris Welman said that, although he knew it had all happened very long ago, he did have some sort of recollection of it. It was like something he had been told in his childhood.
“Wasn’t Duvenhage the patrolman that was caught smuggling quite a big herd of cattle across the border?” Chris Welman asked. “With his police-boys helping him? I seem to remember something about it. The police-boys were singing Bechuana cattle-songs, the white policeman joining in.”
“Yes, the same,” Oupa Bekker replied. “And I still remember my first meeting with him. He asked me where was
their hangout. And when I said I didn’t know what he meant, he said the cattle-smuggling kings. The heads in the game, he explained. He wanted to know where they sat talking and drinking.”
Oupa Bekker said that he could see from that that Patrolman Duvenhage’s training on the Illicit Diamond staff in Kimberley had been of such a nature as to leave him somewhat out of touch with conditions in the Groot Marico Bushveld.
“I mean, I couldn’t go and tell him that there wasn’t such a thing as a gang of foreign cattle-smugglers working in these parts,” Oupa Bekker said. “After all, we all know that if there is such a thing as a few head of cattle being brought across the line on a night when there isn’t much of a moon, well, then we know it can be almost any Marico farmer trying to do a bit of good for himself.
“And we know that there is no particular place where that Marico farmer will go and sit and drink and talk about it, afterwards.
“The only place where a Marico farmer might have a drink would be in the Zeerust bar at Nagmaal. And then he would only talk about the crops, or about the Dominee’s sermon, or about how he’s got the laziest bywoner on this side of the Dwarsberge, and that that bywoner has got the impudence to be making eyes at his daughter.”
Oupa Bekker went on to explain the details of a piece of strategy that he and his partner, Japie Krige, had thought up to get Patrolman Duvenhage out of the way on a night when they were going to smuggle cattle into the Transvaal.
“I wrote a note to Japie Krige,” Oupa Bekker said, “and in the note I told Japie Krige exactly where he had to be at Derdepoort, at midnight, with the wire-cutters.
“And Japie Krige helped me to write the letter. And we laughed quite a lot. We laughed especially at that bit in the letter where I said how careful Japie Krige had to be of that new patrolman, Duvenhage, because he was such a fine asset to the force and had eyes like a hawk.
“We were laughing to think of how proud Duvenhage would be of himself when he read that letter. Then we explained to a Mchopi messenger how he must walk past the police station in a suspicious way, so that Patrolman Duvenhage would be sure to arrest him, and find the letter on him.”
In the meantime, Oupa Bekker said, he would be sitting quietly at home, and his partner, Japie Krige, would be driving cattle towards the boundary fence, and at the right moment a Bechuana would come and call him, and in the starlight they would cut the barbed wires of the fence and bring the cattle across.
And during all that while Patrolman Duvenhage would be lying on the veld miles away, at Derdepoort, next to a swamp. And why Patrolman Duvenhage would be thinking all the time of his bed at the police station, while he was lying by the swamp, was not because of the pillow on the bed, but because the bed had a mosquito net round it.
“But that evening,” Oupa Bekker said, “when it was not a Bechuana from Japie Krige that came to my door, but Patrolman Duvenhage, then I knew that there was something wrong.”
All the same, Oupa Bekker said, he could tell by Patrolman Duvenhage’s manner that he had not come to arrest him.
“Duvenhage walked straight into my voorkamer and didn’t even take his helmet off,” Oupa Bekker said. “And when my little yellow brak pup snapped at him, Patrolman Duvenhage landed out one with his boot that sent the yellow brak pup flying through the door and then it travelled about a hundred yards up the road before it turned round to let out a yelp. I could tell from those signs that Patrolman Duvenhage didn’t have a case against me.”
So Gysbert van Tonder said, yes, he knew. It was when a border patrolman came to your house and was polite, that you had to watch out. It was when a patrolman patted your youngest son on the head, and asked him what class he was in – professing surprise that he should be so far advanced with his education – that the next thing the patrolman would say to you was to get your jacket.
Oupa Bekker said that Patrolman Duvenhage had come pretty straight to the point.
“After that Mchopi messenger had crawled about four times through the same stretch of thorns behind the police station,” Patrolman Duvenhage said to Oupa Bekker, “I decided to give him a break. So I went up to him and kicked him twice, and told him to hand over the letter. Because I knew that was what he wanted. I mean, it’s an old stunt on the diamond fields.”
Oupa Bekker said he could see, from that, that there was an unkind streak in Patrolman Duvenhage. Thinking it was funny to let that Mchopi go on crawling through the thorns all that time, when he could have gone and dealt with him right away.
But it was when Patrolman Duvenhage started talking about how much there would be in it for himself, that an unhappy note crept back into the conversation, Oupa Bekker said. For Patrolman Duvenhage spoke very emphatically about what he called a rake-off, a word Oupa Bekker had not heard of, until then.
“When Japie Krige arrived about midnight with the herd of smuggled cattle, the drovers singing their chorus of a Bechuana cattle-song,” Oupa Bekker went on, “Japie Krige came into my voorkamer prepared to be very indignant because I had not assisted him at the fence.
“But when he saw who it was, sitting opposite me at the table, Japie Krige turned very white. And I have never seen a man hide a pair of wire-cutters behind his back quicker than what Japie Krige did then. But Patrolman Duvenhage did not even bother to look up from the figures that he was working out on a piece of paper.
“But one thing I will say is that Japie Krige and I never brought any more cattle over the line while Duvenhage was the patrolman. We just couldn’t, I mean. Patrolman Duvenhage’s percentage of rake-off, that he worked out for us on paper, was too high. In the end, the only man left in the business was Patrolman Duvenhage. I often wonder how it was that he came to lose his job in Kimberley, though.”
In the silence that followed, Jurie Steyn seemed to be doing a bit of quick thinking.
“What you said at the start,” Jurie Steyn said to Gysbert van Tonder, “about you and Frits Nienaber there by the roadside, last week, and this new policeman riding past, and him not seeing you. Maybe it was that you didn’t want him to see you, I’m thinking. I suppose you were hiding in the bush, you and Frits Nienaber.”
Gysbert van Tonder asked Jurie Steyn what gave him that idea.
“The Bechuana cattle in your camp by the kloof,” Jurie replied. “And this new policeman riding so fast. And I can guess where he was going to, as well – yes, to Derdepoort. All the same, I’d like to know what you said about him in the letter to Frits Nienaber that the policeman took off your messenger.”
“I wrote in the letter,” Gysbert van Tonder declared solemnly, “that Frits Nienaber must be on his guard, because the new policeman was a fine asset to the force and had eyes like a hawk. And to think that he rode right past us, on his way to Derdepoort, and didn’t even see the off-mule.”
Kith and Kin
One of the passengers to alight from the Government lorry at Jurie Steyn’s post office that afternoon was At Naudé, who had gone to the Cape for the funeral of his uncle Ockert Sybrand Naudé, who was reputed to be very rich.
One circumstance that made his neighbours take it for granted that Ockert Sybrand was in a prosperous way was that he never smoked a cigarette unless you offered him one.
Similarly, he would never have a drink in a bar unless it was stood him. For that reason (human nature being what it is) more than one Western Province farmer felt honoured at being allowed to buy Ockert Sybrand a drink or to give him a cigarette.
Another sign that At Naudé’s uncle bore about him of unusual affluence was that he had only two shirts and one pair of trousers. He had a jacket, too, but he was very modest about it. He didn’t count it as a jacket anymore, hardly, Ockert Sybrand used to say – not since the time when a goat ate up so much of the back part of it, on the occasion on which he had hung the jacket on the line for the wind to blow out some of the mould.
“But in this area of the Western Province you don’t need a lot of clothes,” Ockert Sybrand used to explain. “I mean, a
s long as it’s a clean piece of shirt showing under the missing part of my jacket at the back, well, then my jacket is still good enough for wearing at Nagmaal.”
If a man could talk in that way, in the Cape Western Province, then there was no need for you to go and interview the bank manager to find out what his financial standing was. You just knew, out of Ockert Sybrand’s own mouth, that he must be well away.
When At Naudé, alighting from the Government lorry, stepped into Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer there was a healthy glow on his face. The trip to the Cape seemed to have done him good.
“Did it – did it pass off – properly?” Jurie Steyn asked when At Naudé had sat down. Jurie Steyn got just that exact tone in his voice that one uses for obsequies and bereavements. “The – the rites?”
Plegtigheid, was the word Jurie Steyn used, and when he said it there was that in his voice that made it seem, for the moment, as though Jurie Steyn was wearing a black jacket of formal cut and with the stiff edges of a white collar pressing into his chin. You couldn’t help thinking, in contrast, of the deceased’s own Nagmaal jacket, with important parts missing, on account of that goat. It was an unhappy picture.
“There wasn’t any funeral,” At Naudé declared, looking down at the floor.
If he was standing at his uncle Ockert Sybrand’s graveside, and was talking, then, At Naudé could not have sounded more solemn.
“He pulled through, after all,” At Naudé added.
At Naudé spoke of his uncle’s recovery with an air of dejected finality that one reserves for conversing about the dead.
“Oh, he got well, did he, At? Your uncle is all right now, hey?” Jurie Steyn asked.
And this time, in Jurie Steyn’s speech there was genuine condolence. There was none of that affectation of sympathy that you’ve got to wear a black jacket with the lapels ironed smooth on a kitchen table for. Jurie Steyn extended to At Naudé the heartfelt sympathy of one man in shirt-sleeves to another.
The Complete Voorkamer Stories Page 30