While we agreed that a tendency towards anchoretism in the individual would possibly be given stimulus by the circumstances Gysbert van Tonder had conjured up, we had no reason for supposing that that was what had happened in Old Lemare’s case – especially as there was so little we knew about him, actually.
This time Chris Welman had his say.
“Lemare’s name is David Goliath Ebenhaeser Philip Lemare,” Chris Welman said. “He was born at Groot Drakenstein in the Cape on January 18 – I forget the year, now, but I can look it up. He is a European (white) and he has an income of £15 a month from two houses, brick, that he owns in Fordsburg. He is the head of his house, here, and Piet Sikazi (Bechuana) stands in relation of servant to him. Piet gets a wage of £1 3s. 6d. a month and an egg with his mealie-pap every Wednesday. Lemare has got seven fowls that are not inoculated against Newcastle sickness, and a pig that is. He must have read the instructions on the bottle wrong. He’s also –”
“All right, Chris,” Gysbert van Tonder said, “we all know you were a census enumerator. And if you think it’s funny to go and tell everybody what people fill in on their census forms, then I must say that I can’t see the joke in it. And I’m not thinking of myself, either. I’m not ashamed of the whole world knowing everything that’s filled in on my census form. But I’m thinking of other people, that aren’t as fortunate as I am myself in this way, perhaps. I am as much as anything else thinking of my neighbours, who might have things they wouldn’t like known.”
Jurie Steyn said then, too, in a pious tone, that he was also just thinking of the other man when he spoke about how low it was for an enumerator to go around blabbing. We all of us made remarks in similar terms, some of us getting quite heated. It was good to discover the deep sense of loyalty that the Marico farmer entertained towards his neighbour. It was something that one would hardly have suspected, ordinarily.
“It makes your blood boil to think of your private affairs being bruited about all over the place,” At Naudé said. Then he added quickly, “Your neighbour’s private affairs, that is.”
Oupa Bekker had just begun talking about a vile census enumerator they had had in the old days – Blue Nose Theron, they called him, and also Blue Nose something else that Oupa Bekker would not like to repeat because he liked to keep the talk clean – when Johnny Coen noticed that Chris Welman was moving somewhat uncomfortably in his chair.
“It’s all right, Chris,” Johnny Coen said, “we’re not blaming you for anything. We all know it must be a hard and thankless job, being an enumerator, and when At Naudé said just now that no decent man would take it on, he didn’t mean you. He was thinking of that Blue Nose man, likely.”
“But Oupa Bekker hadn’t started talking about that Blue Nosed ––– yet, when At Naudé said that,” Chris Welman replied, sounding aggrieved. At the same time, we couldn’t help feeling that the epithet Chris Welman applied to Blue Nose was a lower word even than Oupa Bekker had been thinking of.
“Anyway, somebody else can have the job of enumerator next census,” Chris Welman went on, “and when it comes to my form I’ll put it in a closed envelope fastened down with sealing-wax, and then I’d like to see some Blue Nose ––– try and find out things about me, that’s all. I say a man’s private life isn’t safe with these low snoopers.”
Having relieved his feelings in that way seemed to put Chris Welman in a much better mood. And we were inquisitive, of course, about Old Lemare. Scandal-mongering and prying into other people’s affairs were – as Jurie Steyn had pointed out – things that we left to census enumerators.
But we felt that it would be instructive for us to know a bit more about Old Lemare. Like what sort of bed did he sleep in, we would like to know. And we couldn’t help thinking that his kitchen must be in too awful a state for words, with dirty plates and pots all over the floor. And we would like to know if the tenants in his Fordsburg houses paid their rent regularly. And we wondered if Old Lemare and the pig washed in the same dish.
We wouldn’t have minded asking Chris Welman such questions. For the interest we took in Old Lemare was quite different from just prying.
“Yes,” Chris Welman said, in reply to a question by Johnny Coen, “it was because of a woman that Old Lemare decided to withdraw from the world – armed: that stick weighs eighteen pounds, he says, with brass and all. Old Lemare used to be a lecturer, in the old days –”
Jurie Steyn whistled.
“Well, I hope he used more words in his lectures than what he uses today,” Jurie Steyn said. “And I hope he also told his listeners more things than just telling them to get the hell out of it, like he does now.”
But Chris Welman said that was just what Old Lemare had told people in his lectures – telling them that they would go to hell if they didn’t lay off drink. Old Lemare was a temperance lecturer, Chris Welman said, and it seemed that temperance lectures were very popular in those days.
We all said that that was something we couldn’t understand, quite. It looked as though Old Lemare was already a bit queer in the head even then, we said, thinking that people would come along and hear him talk about stopping drinking.
“He said it wasn’t so much the men that came to listen to him as the women,” Chris Welman explained, “and he said there was one woman, Sister Gertruida, that used to go ahead and make arrangements at the places where he was going to talk, and he had an understanding with Sister Gertruida, and he was hoping to marry her, some time, because he admired how good she was at organising committees and hiring halls.
“Then, one day, he came to Barberton to lecture and when Sister Gertruida met him at the station she said that Barberton was a mining camp and a very sinful place, and Old Lemare noticed on her breath that she had been eating peppermints – because of her cough, she said.
“And then he found out that the hall wasn’t booked, because of her cough, and then by the evening he noticed that the smell of peppermint on her breath was stronger than ever, and she turned her head sideways when she spoke to him, so that the smell of peppermint shouldn’t upset him, she said.
“Well, it was very sad for Old Lemare when, next thing, Sister Gertrui-da got a job as a barmaid, and because he couldn’t get on without her, he used to go and sit in the bar drinking lemonade and Sister Gertruida would laugh at him, and say he wasn’t a man at all, all the while that one of the customers, a commercial traveller, called her his baby-faced angel.”
Afterwards, when he came to the bar again, Chris Welman said, to look for the commercial traveller, with that brass-shod stick, Old Lemare found that Sister Gertruida had run away with the commercial traveller – flown away, likely, seeing the name that the commercial traveller had given her. And that was the story about how Old Lemare had become a recluse.
There was an interval of silence after Chris Welman had finished talking.
“Is it – is it all true?” Jurie Steyn asked.
“True?” Chris Welman snorted. “It’s as true as Oupa Bekker’s lies about that Blue Nose Pete, whoever he is. Or as true as Gysbert van Tonder’s rubbish about the fair-haired girl throwing manure at the couple riding in the spider. It’s as true as anything I’ve told you about Old Lemare. You don’t think I’d really be so mad as to go to his house in the middle of the cactus with a census form, do you?
“No, I just filled in his census form the best way I could by guessing everything, including his Christian names and his servant Piet, and the two houses in Fordsburg.
“I just guessed all that. And if the authorities don’t like it, well, I would like to see how much would be left of the authorities if they went round with a census form to Old Lemare.”
The Ugly Tale of a Pretty Widow
“And he says that there are still other parts of it that are too awful ever to be told,” At Naudé added.
Well, the parts that we did hear about from At Naudé seemed stark enough.
“And she seems so quiet, and, if I may say so,” Jurie Steyn remark
ed, “pretty.”
So we said that that just went to show how you never knew where you were when it was a widow.
We always thought that Klaas Senekal had done very well for himself in marrying Hendrik Borcherd’s widow. Of course, Klaas Senekal had been on that farm quite a long while. But then, he was only a bywoner.
And although he had certain claims to being considered good-looking – his auburn-coloured moustache, for instance, with spikes sticking out at each side of his face – at the same time it was something of a handicap for a man to have only one leg.
Not that you would notice it much, in the ordinary way, of course, when Klaas Senekal had his wooden leg screwed on. Indeed, at the wedding reception it was observed that Klaas Senekal stood in a more steady way on just one sound leg than most of the guests did on two.
This in itself did not seem too happy a presage. It looked as though Hendrik Borcherd’s widow, Petronella, was already on their wedding day bending her new husband to her will.
“Yes, I still remember how Klaas Senekal was sipping homemade ginger ale out of a small glass,” Jurie Steyn recalled in reminiscent tones. “And he was saying how much he enjoyed it. And he was drinking it in small sips, like that, he said, just so that he could revel in it more. And he said that Petronella had told him that when she got married to the late Hendrik Borcherd, the late Hendrik Borcherd had drunk only cocoa, that day.”
Well, we said that Klaas Senekal had been on that farm long enough, as a bywoner, to know that if Hendrik Borcherd had drunk cocoa on his wedding day, he certainly didn’t touch it again afterwards.
Not from what we all knew of the late Hendrik Borcherd’s habits, we said.
And we also said that that just went to show you. We could only come to the conclusion that Klaas Senekal must really be in love with Petronella.
“Well, she is pretty,” Jurie Steyn said again.
But Chris Welman said that that wasn’t the point. What seemed extraordinary to him was that, although he had lived there so long as a bywoner, Klaas Senekal could still allow Petronella to tell him things about how superior and all that her late husband was, even though Klaas Senekal was himself in a position to know better.
“Because he also told me, at the wedding,” Chris Welman added, “that Petronella had informed him that the late Hendrik Borcherd also regularly wiped his veldskoens on some leaves before walking into the house from the lands, and that he also never sat in the voorhuis with his hat on.”
Ill-mannered guffaws of a nature that would have been painful to the late Hendrik Borcherd greeted Chris Welman’s statement. That was if Hendrik Borcherd had been in any way the kind of paragon that his widow held him up to be. We, however, knew otherwise about Hendrik.
This started a pretty lengthy discussion about widow women in general. We said things about widow women that we ourselves recognised as more than ordinarily profound. Above all, we stressed the need for the most extreme kind of caution to be exercised by the masculine burgher in his dealings with a widow.
“It’s this comparing business, too,” Chris Welman said, “that poor old Klaas Senekal must have had a gutsful of, also. Not that I’ve seen much of him, recently. But the few times that I did come across him the spikes of his moustache seemed a good bit wilted. It’s only natural that that should happen to a man – a man with that kind of moustache, I mean – if he’s got to listen regularly, day in and out, to stories of what a model his wife’s first husband was. Made-up stories, too, as often as not. It’s not only your moustache that suffers that way, but your laugh changes, too. I mean, when you see in a mirror how the spikes of your moustache droop, then the laugh you give is a – is a hollow sort of laugh.”
Young or old, Gysbert van Tonder agreed, a widow woman was best to keep away from.
“If she was happy with her first husband,” Gysbert proceeded, “there’s nothing that her second husband can do that she doesn’t find fault with. And if her first husband gave her a bad life, she’ll take it all – and more – out of the next man she marries. She’ll rule him with a rod of iron.”
It wasn’t quite as bad as that in Klaas Senekal’s case, however, At Naudé said.
“I’m only talking about when I saw him in that cheap Boardinghouse in Zeerust last week,” At Naudé explained, “after he had run away from the farm. That rod of iron part isn’t quite true. All that Petronella used to correct him with, Klaas Senekal says, was a short sjambok. But, of course, his trouble was that he couldn’t ever get out of the way as fast as he would have liked, because of his wooden leg. He says he had never really found out until then – until the time when Petronella started on him regularly with the short sjambok – what a disadvantage it was in life for a man not to be able to be swift and surefooted in his movements.”
Jurie Steyn said it was difficult to think of Petronella in that way. When you pictured to yourself how, when she smiled, her lips turned up at the corners.
But Chris Welman said that maybe the only corners Klaas Senekal was concerned with were the ones he was trying to crawl into when Petronella’s sjambok hand came down and she wasn’t smiling.
“And when you think of her eyes,” Jurie Steyn continued, ignoring Chris Welman’s remarks.
That was where psychology came in, young Vermaak, the schoolmaster, said then. He had not met the late Hendrik Borcherd himself, he said, but from the few hints we had dropped it would appear that the late Hendrik Borcherd was a completely opposite kind of character from Klaas Senekal. And if Petronella had been unhappy with Hendrik Borcherd, what had probably happened was that she had taken a vicarious revenge on Klaas Senekal.
“We’ve all been saying that we don’t know what goes on in a widow woman’s mind,” young Vermaak went on, sounding solemn and learned and, at the same time, slightly diffident, as though he was consciously trying to talk with a wisdom beyond his years, “but does anyone of us really know what goes on in any woman’s mind? Do we married men know very much of the inner thoughts and feelings of our own wives, for that matter?”
We acknowledged quite frankly that we didn’t. What the schoolmaster said there was fair enough, we agreed. It was only when he made his next remark that we winked at one another.
“All that offers us a key to the workings of a woman’s mind,” young Vermaak added, “is the science of psychology.”
Without knowing anything about the science of psychology, we at least had enough common sense to know when a man was deluding himself. Nevertheless, because what he had started off by saying was in itself not uninteresting, we allowed the schoolmaster to continue.
“Now, you all think that why Petronella married Klaas Senekal was because of his good looks and his handsome, spiked moustache,” young Vermaak said.
Maybe not only for his looks, Chris Welman said. But his looks would have helped.
“Well, I’ll tell you why she married Klaas Senekal,” the schoolmaster said. “She married him for his wooden leg. That’s where the study of psychology is so good in giving you an insight into human nature. Because Petronella had been dominated by her first husband, and had resented it, she wanted her second husband to be a man that she could, in turn, tyrannise. And what better man could she find for that purpose than Klaas Senekal, with his physical handicap?”
Lots better, we said, straight away.
A man didn’t have to be in the last stages of rheumatics for a Woman to boss him around, we said. In fact, it was usually the biggest and strongest and loudest kind of man there was that was most under his wife’s thumb, we said.
What was more, if a woman was really keen on giving a man a dog’s life there were other ways of doing it than with a short sjambok. Ways that made your blood boil, too, we said, when you thought some of them over carefully, afterwards. Nor was it by any means just widow women that engaged in such practices, we agreed.
All the same, the next part of At Naudé’s statement did appear to lend a certain measure of colour to the schoolmaster’s theory �
�� that part having to do with the widow marrying a one-legged man.
“He said there were still other things that were too awful ever to be told,” At Naudé said. “And seeing that it’s between a man and his wife, I didn’t, of course, ask him anything more about it. Not that I didn’t keep silent for quite a while, naturally enough, so as to give him a chance to talk if he wanted to. I also hinted about how much good it does a man to unburden himself freely and fully. But out of a feeling of delicacy I didn’t go beyond that – except to say that if he wanted to be snooty about it and keep it all to himself, well, he could lump it, then.
“But it was when Klaas Senekal told me of how he came to leave the farm – escaped from the farm is the only right way to say it – that I began to understand something of what he had suffered. Their marriage had got to that stage of disunion, he said, where Petronella had hidden his wooden leg. He had saved some money over the years that he had been a bywoner.
“He knotted the money in a tobacco-bag, and one day, when the Government lorry again called at the farm, and Petronella was inside the house, he hopped on one leg around the back of the lorry and clambered aboard. And he didn’t come out from among the milk-cans that he was hiding behind until the lorry was half-way to the Boardinghouse in Zeerust. All the time he was in terror that Petronella would catch up with the lorry and pull him off it.”
Well, there was a thing for you, now, we said. And we said that we could imagine that Klaas Senekal must be very bitter, sitting there in that Zeerust Boardinghouse with the wallpaper peeling off in patches, as At Naudé described it, and brooding on the miserable way he had been treated. It seemed a shameful end to a marriage that had started off so hopefully with the bridegroom sipping homemade ginger ale.
Only time could tell how a marriage would turn out. You couldn’t go by the confetti and the angel on the wedding-cake, we said.
The Complete Voorkamer Stories Page 35