The Complete Voorkamer Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  But what he would not seek to deny about his own family when they came up from the Cape, Jurie Steyn said, was that they enjoyed a greater than ordinary measure of prosperity. Compared with most of the Transvalers, that was.

  “Not that I won’t admit that I’m myself a bit on the poor side, today,” Jurie Steyn added, before Gysbert van Tonder could make another interjection. “And it’s not that I’m ashamed of being poor, either. There’s nothing about it that I’ve got to try and hide.”

  That was true enough. Shielded as his apparel was by the post office counter, there were no flaws in his garments that Jurie Steyn needed to retire from the gaze of vulgar curiosity.

  “It seems to me, though,” At Naudé said, “that why the people living in this part of the Transvaal in the old days – living in their hartbees houses and all, in the Bushveld – why they were, generally speaking” – he paused a moment to find the right word – “flat, was that they just perhaps didn’t care so much in those days for riches. They were content to be poor. They knew there were more important things in life than just money.”

  Then Jurie Steyn said that, well, it was the same with us today, of course. We knew there were higher things than having the manager at the bank in Bekkersdal bowing and scraping to us, as though we were sheep farmers. And let a sheep farmer come and try to run sheep here among the thorn-bushes of the Dwarsberge, where it was just made for blue-tongue, and then see how it would be with that sheep farmer after a couple of seasons.

  It just made him laugh, Jurie Steyn said, to think of that sheep farmer going to see the bank manager at Bekkersdal after that, and the sheep farmer getting treated by the bank manager like any one of us got treated.

  When Jurie Steyn made that last remark Chris Welman gave a short, harsh laugh. It was clear that Chris Welman was recalling some interview of his own with the Bekkersdal bank manager.

  Thereupon At Naudé said that, speaking for himself, personally, he was glad to think that he, personally, had got inside himself a good deal of that fine spirit that the old Transvalers already had inside themselves, in their wattle-and-daub and reed-and-daub houses, long before his own immediate forebears had even thought of trekking up from the Cape.

  He was glad to think that he himself today had higher beliefs than just to imagine that to be rich was everything. What was more, from what he had heard over the wireless, there was no guarantee that wool prices would always remain up there in the sky, somewhere, anyway.

  Chris Welman laughed again. This time it was a more human, open-hearted sort of laugh.

  “After all, where does it all lead to?” At Naudé continued. “All the money these sheep farmers are making, I mean. Those new lavish homes they’re building with inside bathrooms that have got pipes going off right underneath the dining-room floor. And the walls painted smooth with cream paint like a looking-glass. Is that so much better than to have just a –” (his eyes swept along the walls of Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer) “– just a ceiling of plastered-over Spanish reeds, with pieces of the mud coming away in places? Or uneven walls with huge brown splotches where the whitewash is peeling off in places? Or the clay marks there where the white ants went all that way up – at a time when Jurie Steyn’s wife didn’t have any paraffin or Cooper’s dip in the house, I suppose?”

  Jurie Steyn coughed uneasily. Maybe he was protected, all right, as far as his clothing below the level of the post office counter was concerned. But there was the whole of his voorkamer exposed in the nakedness of a poverty that – as we had all said in a manly way – we were none of us ashamed of. Jurie Steyn could not go and hide the walls of his voorkamer behind the counter, or thrust them out of sight under a riempiesbank, the while he declared that honest poverty was no sin, and that his people, trekking up from the Cape, had not been unacquainted with some of the hedonistic titillations imparted by creature comfort.

  “The absolute filth, even,” Chris Welman proceeded from where At Naudé left off, “of living in a pigsty like this – well, we all know it’s just because that sort of thing doesn’t worry Jurie Steyn, at all. He’s above it. What I mean is, stink, even –”

  That was when Jurie Steyn indicated to Chris Welman, in somewhat strong terms, that he reckoned he had gone far enough. Not that he didn’t realise, of course, Jurie Steyn said, that both Chris Welman and At Naudé, in the remarks they had made, were only seeking to compliment him on the higher kind of attitude that he had to life, which led him to scorn low gain.

  But there were limits to the amount of flattery a man could put up with, Jurie Steyn said. And, in any case, Chris Welman needn’t talk. Just look about how careful you had to be where you put your feet down on Chris Welman’s front stoep. Half the time you didn’t know if it was a front stoep or a fowl hok, Jurie Steyn said.

  Before the discussion grew really acrimonious, however, Oupa Bekker had begun to relate an old Transvaal story that introduced a good many of the features we had already touched on. It was a story of a poor girl, Miemie de Jager, who lived with her parents in the Groot Marico in the kind of hartbees house that we had already been talking about.

  “It was the kind of dwelling –” Oupa Bekker started.

  “You don’t need to say that part of it again. We already know all that,” Jurie Steyn interjected. For Jurie Steyn had noticed that At Naudé was again surveying his voorkamer in a thoughtful manner.

  “Very well, I’ll just say then that Miemie de Jager’s parents didn’t stay in exactly a palace –” Oupa Bekker proceeded.

  “Yes,” At Naudé nodded. “I can imagine just the kind of hovel she stayed in. I must say I think I’ve got a pretty good idea, now. And I think the less said about it, the better.”

  Thereupon Jurie Steyn burst out that At Naudé should be the last person to talk. If Miemie de Jager had ever seen At Naudé’s kitchen, and the kind of plates he ate out of, Jurie Steyn said, then Miemie de Jager would feel, next to it, that her parents were rich people from the Cape who had just trekked in, sitting in sitting-up chairs.

  Jurie Steyn talked as though he already knew what Miemie de Jager was like. By comparison with At Naudé’s kitchen, she would think that, Jurie Steyn said.

  Only after Gysbert van Tonder had spoken at some length, and in a sneering way – saying that for people who weren’t ashamed to be poor it was surprising how fussy some of us were – was Oupa Bekker able to get on with his story.

  “Miemie de Jager,” Oupa Bekker said, “lived with her parents in a – in just a plain house, that’s all, that was near the first sawmill that they had in this part of the Transvaal. And one morning, when she was on her way home again from the sawmill –”

  “Good Lord!” Chris Welman ejaculated suddenly. “You don’t mean to say they were that poor. You don’t mean she worked in the sawmill – those heavy thirty-foot logs – that’s no work for a young girl with fair hair and dimples – sawing –”

  It was apparent that Chris Welman had already formed a picture in his own mind of how Miemie de Jager looked.

  But Oupa Bekker said, no, it was just Miemie de Jager’s father that worked in the sawmill. Miemie went there every morning to fetch firewood in a sack.

  “And then that morning, on her way home through the bluegums,” Oupa Bekker continued, “she saw a young man approach along the path – a young man that she didn’t know. She guessed right away that he must be a son of those new people that had bought up the sawmill and the whole property. Rich people from the Cape, they were.

  “And so she let the sack of firewood fall from her shoulders quickly, and she hid the sack behind a bluegum. She didn’t mind the young man seeing her walking barefooted, but she didn’t want him to see her carrying that sack of wood. It went against her womanly pride. Not that she was ashamed of her parents being poor –”

  No, no, we said. Poverty wasn’t a crime, we said. But we had noticed Chris Welman hiding his broken veldskoen. And we had seen what At Naudé had done, furtively, almost, with his trouser turn-up, a l
ittle earlier on. So we knew just how Miemie de Jager felt about that sack, that symbolised how her parents were none too well off.

  “She decided to walk straight on, and pass the young man, and then after he was out of sight she would go back and fetch the sack,” Oupa Bekker said. “But after she had passed the young man – keeping her eyes down on the ground as she passed him – and she turned round to see if he was out of sight yet, she saw that he had turned round, to look back at her. And when he saw her turning round, he thought – oh well, they were both young. And so they walked slowly towards each other, Miemie de Jager walking much more slowly than the young man, and blushing a good deal.

  “And the young man said that he was going to look at the sawmill that his father had just bought. And Miemie said that she had come out for a walk through the bluegums and to pick yellow veld-flowers. And they stood talking a long while in the pathway. And afterwards the girl said she had to go home, now. And then the young man said, oh, but what about her firewood. And he asked could he carry it home for her. And she said, yes. And when she saw him lift the sack of firewood onto his broad young shoulders, she knew that she would never need to carry a sack of firewood home again.”

  But Jurie Steyn wanted to know how Oupa Bekker knew all that. All about what went on in Miemie de Jager’s thoughts, Jurie Steyn said.

  “She told me after we were married,” Oupa Bekker answered. “You see, I was that young man. It was my father that had just bought that sawmill. You must understand that, when we came up from the Cape to the Transvaal, my parents were in easy circumstances.”

  Weather Prophet

  T hat was after At Naudé had gone over the whole thing several times, telling us not only what he had heard over the wireless, but also what he had read in the newspapers. He made it clear to us what a weather wizard was. He also explained – although in his case not quite so clearly, perhaps – the functions and raison d’être of the meteorologist.

  What made it more difficult for At Naudé was the fact that, while we already knew about weather prophecy, having met some prophets and having on occasion tried our hand at forecasting, ourselves – in the time of sowing, say – the lengthy word, meteorologist, was a new one on us.

  “All the same,” Jurie Steyn persisted, after At Naudé had finished with his explanations, “I still don’t see why you should speak in such an off-hand way about a weather prophet, just because he can prophesy a good while beforehand what the weather is going to be – and he gets it right. It shouldn’t matter that he goes by just simple things like it’s the last quarter of the moon on Wednesday and the wind changed last night.”

  Chris Welman expressed his agreement with Jurie Steyn.

  “Well, I don’t pretend to be a weather prophet or anything like,” Chris Welman said, “but you’ll remember how only last year I was right when I said, that time, that we’d have rain in three days. And when I said it, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But I just went by what my grandfather once said about when the wind blows from the Pilanesberg with the new moon, what to expect.”

  And we said, yes, you could also tell if it was going to rain by other signs. “By the way swallows fly,” Johnny Coen said. “And red ants walking around after sunset,” Jurie Steyn said. “And by how the smoke comes out of the chimney,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “And by spiders –” Oupa Bekker began.

  At Naudé looked very superior, then, and he wore a thin smile.

  “But you haven’t any of you perhaps got a balloon going up on an island in the sea, have you?” he asked. “Or has any of you got a whole string of weather stations right through the Union? Just one weather station, even, maybe?”

  With none of us answering, At Naudé looked more satisfied than ever with himself, then.

  “That’s where a meteorologist is different,” At Naudé announced. “A meteorologist has got all those things.”

  Although he realised then that he was beaten, Jurie Steyn could nevertheless not bring himself to yield straight away.

  “It still doesn’t make sense, quite,” Jurie Steyn declared – but with less conviction than before – “that what you call a meteorologist doesn’t say that next week there’s going to be snow – and there is snow. Or that there is going to be a whirlwind – and then next week we’ve got no roofs left. It looks like it’s only a weather prophet that comes and forecasts about that kind of thing. It looks like a meteorologist doesn’t worry about it – or know of it, even.”

  “And does a meteorologist need to?” At Naudé asked, triumphantly. “Why should he trouble about working out when it’s going to rain, say, seeing how he’s got all those things for taking ground temperatures with, and for measuring the wind with, and he’s got a balloon on an island in the sea? I mean, he’s a scientist, a meteorologist is. You don’t catch him walking outside to see what kind of smoke is coming out of his weather-station chimney. Or going by red ants – no matter how many red ants may be walking around after supper-time. Or by spiders –”

  The absurdity of that last idea struck At Naudé so forcibly that he spluttered. We laughed a little ourselves, too, then. Yes, bringing in spiders seemed to be going just too far.

  “After all, a meteorologist must be a man with a certain amount of learning,” At Naudé finished up. “And so I don’t suppose he’d be able to prophesy the weather right, even if he tried.”

  We could not but acknowledge, then, that what At Naudé said was indeed true. Such weather prophets as we knew to speak to were not people of great learning. And when one of ourselves, for instance, forecast correctly about did we have to put a bucksail over the wagon on the road to Bekkersdal, then we realised, also, that our way of working it out did not owe much to the letters we had been taught to write on our slates in the schoolroom. It was easy to see that a meteorologist would be far above a thing just like telling us when to put in autumn giant cauliflowers. Our Hollander schoolmaster had been just as far above it, too.

  “Of course, what helps you a lot in weather prophesying,” Chris Welman said, “is mealies. I mean, after you’ve sown a patch of mealies, and they start coming up, then you know right away there’s going to be a long piece of just absolute drought. And when a mealie gets to that size – if he ever gets to that size, I mean – where a head starts forming and you’ve got to have rain, then, or you won’t get a crop at all, well, then you can be sure that for a whole month there’s going to be just clear blue skies, so that you sit on your front stoep for day after day, working out in one of your children’s school writing-books how much you owe the Indian storekeeper at Ramoutsa.

  “And when I see by my youngest son, Petrus’s, quarterly report that he is good at sums, I think, yes, and I know what he’s going to use all those sums for, one day, sitting on his front stoep with a pencil and a piece of paper, waiting for the rain. He’ll need all the sums and more that they can teach him at school, I think to myself, then.”

  Thereupon Jurie Steyn, who was not unacquainted with conditions prevailing years ago in the Cape Zwartland, said that if there was anything better than a mealie for prophesying the weather with, it was just a wheat plant.

  “When a wheat plant,” Jurie Steyn continued, “has got to there where you say to yourself that next week you’ll start reaping and so you’ve got to see about getting all the sickles sharpened, then it’s almost as though that wheat plant is himself so educated that he can tell you not to worry about it. For there’s going to be the biggest hailstorm in years – it’s like it’s the wheat plant himself that’s telling you that: an ordinary Hard-Red wheat plant with no learning to speak of.”

  When it was a matter of hail, now, Oupa Bekker said, well, there was Klaas Rasmus. As a weather wizard Klaas Rasmus could have been said to specialise in hail, Oupa Bekker explained. Of course, nobody knew what methods Klaas Rasmus employed, exactly, Oupa Bekker said, although it was reasonable to suppose that it wasn’t weather charts and graphs and rainfall figures and things like that. For one thing, it was unl
ikely that Klaas Rasmus would have known what rainfall figures were if you showed them to him, even.

  “Not that he would ever have let on that he didn’t know,” Oupa Bekker continued. “Klaas Rasmus was not that kind of a man at all. If you had shown him the kind of rainfall figures, say, that At Naudé has been talking about, Klaas Rasmus would have nodded his head up and down solemnly quite a number of times.

  “And he would have said, yes, that was just about how he would have worked it out himself, he thought, if he had had a piece of paper handy with lines drawn on it like that, and all. And then he would ask were you sure you were holding those rainfall figures the right way up, seeing that there were just one or two things there that he wasn’t sure if he agreed with, quite.

  “You see, that was Klaas Rasmus all over. If he understood a thing or not, it didn’t make much difference to him. He would have something to say about it, all the same. But because he was so good at prophesying hail (being proved right time and again) there were a lot of little weaknesses he had that we could overlook.”

  Jurie Steyn said, then, that he thought he had heard that name, Klaas Rasmus, before, somewhere. Didn’t he have some sort of nickname, Jurie Steyn asked.

  Yes, that was quite right, Oupa Bekker said. They used to call him Klaas Baksteen, because of the size of the hailstones that used to fall each time that he prophesied hail. The hailstones would come down then the size of half-bricks.

  “And I also seem to remember from something that I heard of long ago,” Jurie Steyn went on, “that he – no, I can’t recall it quite, now. But it was something that didn’t seem to make sense, altogether, in a way.”

  Oupa Bekker said that he believed he knew what it was that Jurie Steyn was thinking about – something that Jurie Steyn had been told, about a happening in the Marico long ago. Before Jurie Steyn had ever heard of the Groot Marico, even, maybe. It was a long story, Oupa Bekker added, and as likely as not it was something quite different from what Jurie Steyn was thinking about.