The Complete Voorkamer Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  “You see, like with all cases of real greatness,” Oupa Bekker said, “there was some doubt, in some people’s minds, about whether Klaas Baksteen was really as good at prophesying hail as he was held to be. There was talk that he was wrong, sometimes. And there was also talk that he would only forecast that there was going to be hail the size of half-bricks when the sky was already black and high up, and with awful white patches just above the horizon from which a child of four would know that after another half an hour there would be no harvest left that year.

  “And so, one day, when he had worked out, to the hour, almost, when there was going to be a hailstorm the like of which this part of the Marico had rarely seen, and that hailstorm still a week ahead, Klaas Baksteen journeyed down to Bekkersdal so that the editor of the newspaper there could print it in his newspaper well before the hailstorm actually happened. And Klaas Baksteen put up at a hotel there, deciding to wait until his prophecy came out. And they say that everybody was very interested, of course. And quite a lot of people who didn’t believe in Klaas Baksteen’s powers said that that would show him up, all right, seeing that his prophecy was printed in the newspaper.

  “And they say that it must have been pretty dreadful for Klaas Baksteen himself, waiting there in that hotel on the day when there was to be the hailstorm – more especially since up to quite late in the afternoon it was an absolutely cloudless sky. And Klaas Baksteen worried about it so much that afterwards he sent for a brandy, even, to try and calm himself. And afterwards he sent for another brandy. And when the waiter brought him the second brandy the sunlight shining on the glass was so bright that it blinded Klaas Baksteen, almost. That was how little chance there seemed to be of hail, then.”

  Oupa Bekker put a match to his pipe and puffed steadily for some moments.

  “But before it was evening,” he said, “there was such a hailstorm in Bekkersdal that hardly a window was left unbroken. Well, that was a proud moment for Klaas Baksteen, all right. Just with that he proved that he was the greatest hail-prophet in the world. And before the sun had quite set a man who cultivated asparagus under glass frames just outside the town came and called on Klaas Baksteen at the hotel. And you’ve got no idea how proud Klaas Baksteen was that that man visited him. Even though Klaas Baksteen always used to wear a moustache after that. It was a thick, curling sort of moustache that Klaas Baksteen grew to cover up the place where his front teeth used to be before the asparagus man called round to see him.”

  But he couldn’t understand that, Jurie Steyn said. It didn’t make sense to him, Jurie Steyn said, quite. Although he had heard something about it, he seemed to remember.

  “Well, why Klaas Baksteen was so happy about it,” Oupa Bekker said, “was because that proved how great a weather prophet he was. The man who grew asparagus under glass frames proved it, by cutting up so rough. It made Klaas Baksteen king of hail-prophets, that.”

  Lost City

  “It used to be different, in the Kalahari,” Chris Welman said, commenting on At Naudé’s announcement of what he had heard over the wireless. “You could go for miles and miles, and it would be just desert. All you’d come across, perhaps, would be a couple of families of Bushmen, and they’d be disappearing over the horizon. Then, days later, you’d again come across a couple of families of Bushmen. And they’d be disappearing over the horizon.

  “And you wouldn’t know if it was the same couple of families of Bushmen. Or the same horizon. And you wouldn’t care, either. I mean, in the Kalahari desert you wouldn’t care. Maybe in other deserts it is different. I’m only talking about the Kalahari.”

  Yes, all you would be concerned about, in the Kalahari, Jurie Steyn said, was what the couple of families of Bushmen would be disappearing over the horizon with. For you might not always be able to check up quickly to find out what was missing out of your camp.

  “But from what At Naudé has been telling us,” Chris Welman went on, “it looks like you’d have no quiet in the Kalahari today. Or room to move. From Malopolole onwards it seems that there’s just one expedition on top of another, each one searching for a lost city. And you can’t slip out for a glass of pontac, even, in case when you come back somebody else has taken your place in the line.”

  It was apparent that Chris Welman was drawing on his memory of some past unhappy visit to Johannesburg.

  “It’s not hard to think of how that city got lost in the first place,” Jurie Steyn observed. “It must have been that the people that built the city didn’t know what a couple of families of Bushmen were like. Still, I can’t believe it, somehow, quite. Not a whole city, that is. I can’t somehow imagine Bushmen disappearing over the horizon with all that. For one thing, it wouldn’t be any use to them. Now, if it wasn’t so much a question of a whole lost city, but of some of the things that got lost out of the city – well, I could tell those expeditions just where to go and look.”

  But At Naudé said that we had perhaps misunderstood one or two of the less important details of the news he had communicated to us. There weren’t quite as many expeditions as what Chris Welman seemed to think, out in the Kalahari looking for a lost city. Moreover, it wasn’t a city that had got lost in the way that Jurie Steyn meant by lost. The city had just been built so many years ago that people had afterwards forgotten about it. Don’t ask him how a thing like that could happen, now, At Naudé said. He admitted that he couldn’t imagine it, himself.

  “I mean let’s not take even a city –” At Naudé started to explain.

  “No, let a few Bushmen families take it,” Jurie Steyn said, promptly, “with the washing hanging on the clothes-lines and all.”

  “Not a city, even,” At Naudé continued, pointedly ignoring Jurie Steyn’s second attempt that afternoon at being what he thought funny, “but if we think of quite a small town, like Bekkersdal, say … Not that I won’t agree that we’ve got a wider water furrow in the main street of Bekkersdal than they’ve got in Zeerust, of course, but it’s only that there are less people in the main street of Bekkersdal than they’ve got in Zeerust, if you understand what I mean … Well, can you imagine anybody in Bekkersdal forgetting where they built the place? After all, anybody can see for himself how silly that sounds. It’s like Dominee Welthagen, just before the Nagmaal, suddenly forgetting where the church is. Or David Policansky not remembering where his shop is, just after he’s done it all up for the New Year.”

  We acknowledged that At Naudé was right there, of course. With Dominee Welthagen we might not perhaps be too sure. For it was known that in some respects the dominee could at times be pretty absent-minded. But with David Policansky At Naudé was on safe enough ground. Especially after that big new plate-glass window that David Policansky had put in. It was not reasonable to think that he would be able to forget it. Not with what he was still likely to be owing on it, we said. You just weren’t allowed to forget anything you were owing on.

  “So you see how much more silly it is with a city, then,” At Naudé concluded. “Thinking that people would go and build a city, and then just lose it.”

  Thereupon young Vermaak, the schoolmaster, said that he had learnt in history of how for many centuries people believed that there was a foreign city called Monomotapa in these parts, and that numbers of expeditions had been sent out in the past to look for it. It was even marked on maps, long ago, the schoolmaster said. But if you saw that name on a map of Africa today, he said, well, then you would know that it wasn’t a very up-to-date map of Africa.

  As likely as not, there would not be the town of Vanderbijl Park marked on that map, young Vermaak said, laughing. Or the town of Odendaalsrus, even. There was supposed to be a lot of gold and diamonds in that city with the foreign name, the schoolmaster added.

  Well, with those remarks young Vermaak broached a subject with which we were not altogether unfamiliar. More than one of us had, before today, held in his hand a map showing as clearly as anything with a cross the exact spot where the hidden treasure would be fou
nd buried. And all we’d be likely to dig up there would be an old jam tin. The apocryphal element in African cartography was something we had had experience of.

  “All I can say,” Gysbert van Tonder observed at this stage, “is that I don’t know so much about a lost city. But it seems to me there’s going to be more than one lost expedition. Depending on how far the expeditions are going into the desert beyond Kang-Kang.”

  Several of us looked surprised when Gysbert van Tonder said that. Surprised and also impressed. We knew that in his time Gysbert van Tonder had penetrated pretty deeply into the Kalahari, bartering beads and brass wire for cattle. That was, of course, before the natives in those parts found that they didn’t need those things, anymore, since they could buy their clothes ready-made at the Indian store at Ramoutsa. Nevertheless, we had not imagined that he had gone as far into the desert as all that.

  “But is there –” Jurie Steyn enquired after a pause, “is there really a place by that name, though?”

  Gysbert van Tonder smiled.

  “On the map, yes,” he said, “it is. On the map in my youngest son’s school atlas you can read that name for yourself there, big as anything. And in the middle of the Kalahari. Well, there’s something one of those expeditions can go and look for. And maybe that is their lost city. At least, it’s lost enough. Because you certainly won’t be able to tell it from any other spot in the Kalahari that you’re standing in the middle of, watching a couple of families of Bushmen disappearing over the horizon from.”

  So Jurie Steyn said, yes, he reckoned that if it was a lost city that an expedition was after, why, then he reckoned that just about any part of the Kalahari would do for that. Because when the expedition came back from the Kalahari without having found anything, it would prove to the whole world just how lost that city actually was, Jurie Steyn reckoned. If that was what an expedition into the Kalahari was for, then that expedition just couldn’t go wrong. In fact, the less that an expedition like that found, then, the better. Because it would show that the city had been lost without as much as a trace, even, Jurie Steyn added.

  “It’s a queer thing, though,” the schoolmaster said, “when you come to think of it, that for so many hundreds of years, when the interior of South Africa was still unexplored, there should have been a legend of a Golden City. And people were so convinced of the existence of this city that they went searching for it. They were so sure that there was that city of gold that they even marked it on their maps. And what seems so extraordinary to me is that one day that Golden City actually would arise, and not too far away, either, from where the old geographers had centuries before indicated on their maps. It was as though they were all prophesying the rise of Johannesburg. And at most they were only a few hundred miles out.”

  That was something that passed his comprehension, young Vermaak said. That men should have been able to mark on a map, centuries beforehand, a city that was not there yet. That to him was one of the mysteries of Africa, the schoolmaster declared.

  Thereupon Oupa Bekker said that if it was a thing like that that the schoolmaster thought wonderful, then the schoolmaster would have a lot to learn, still.

  “After all, with South Africa so big,” Oupa Bekker said, “they were bound to go and build cities in it, somewhere. That stands to reason. And so, for a person to go and put a mark on a map and to say that some day there is going to be a city there, or thereabouts – well, what would have been wonderful was if it didn’t work out, some time. And to say that it’s surprising how that man made that mark on the map centuries ago, even. Well, I think that only shows how bad he was at it. If Johannesburg got started soon after he had prophesied it, then there might have been something in it, then. But it seems to me that the man who made that map wasn’t only a few hundred miles out, as Meneer Vermaak says, but that he was also a few hundred years out. What’s more, he also got the name wrong. Unless you also think that that name – what’s it, again –”

  “Monomotapa,” young Vermaak announced.

  “– isn’t far out from sounding like Johannesburg,” Oupa Bekker said.

  It made him think of his grand-uncle Toons, all this, Oupa Bekker said.

  Now, there was something that really did come as a surprise to us. The general feeling we had about Oupa Bekker was a feeling of immense antiquity, of green and immemorial age. In the lost olden-time cities that our talk was about we could, without thinking twice, accord to Oupa Bekker the rights of a venerable citizenship. And in that crumbled town we could conceive of Oupa Bekker as walking about in the evening, among cobwebbed monuments.

  It was foolish, of course, to have ideas like that. But that was the impression, in point of appearance and personality, that Oupa Bekker did make on us. He seemed to belong with the battered although timeless antique. He occupied a place not so much among living humanity as in oral tradition.

  And so when Oupa Bekker spoke of himself as having had a grand-uncle, it just about took our breath away.

  “You were saying about your grand-uncle?” Jurie Steyn, who was the first to recover, remarked. From the tone in his voice, you could see that Jurie Steyn pictured Oupa Bekker’s grand-uncle as a lost city in himself, with weeds clambering over his ruined walls.

  “My grand-uncle Toons,” Oupa Bekker continued, unaware of the stir he had caused, “also had the habit, when he first trekked into the Transvaal that was all just open veld, then, of stopping every so often and looking around him and saying that one day a great city would arise right there where he was standing, when it was now just empty veld. On his way up, when he trekked into the Northern Transvaal, he stopped to say it at where is today Potchefstroom and also at where is today Johannesburg and Pretoria. In that way you could say that he was just as good as the man that did that map. And I suppose he was, too. That is, if you don’t count all those hundreds of other places where my grand-uncle Toons also stopped to say the same thing, and where there is today still just open veld.”

  It was Jurie Steyn who brought the conversation back to where we had started from.

  “Those expeditions going to search for the lost city,” he asked of At Naudé, “have they set out yet? And do you know if they are likely to pass this way, at all? Because, if it’s last letters they want to send home, and so on, then my post office is as good as any. I mean, their last letters have got a good chance of getting to where they are addressed to. I don’t say the expeditions have got the same chance of getting to the lost city. But instead of taking all that trouble, why don’t they just drop a letter in the post to the lost city – writing to the mayor, say? Then they’ll at least know if the lost city is there or not.”

  But At Naudé said that from what he had heard over the wireless the expeditions were on the point of leaving, or had already left, Johannesburg. And as for what Jurie Steyn had said about writing letters – well, he had the feeling that more than one letter that he had himself posted had ended up there, in that lost city.

  “Johannesburg?” Oupa Bekker queried, talking as though he was emerging from a dream. “Well, I’ve been in Johannesburg only a few times. Like with the Show, say. And I’ve passed through there on the way to Cape Town. And I’ve always tried to pull down the curtains of the compartment I was in when we went through Johannesburg. And I have thought of the Good Book, then.

  “And I have thought that if ever there was a lost city, it was Johannesburg, I have thought. And how lost, I have thought … The expedition doesn’t need to leave Johannesburg, if it’s a lost city it wants.”

  Mother-in-law

  “It’s not that she’s here now,” Jurie Steyn said. “Not actually in the house, I mean. Last time I saw her was about half an hour ago. She had her hat on.”

  So Chris Welman said that he could sympathise with Jurie Steyn, since having your mother-in-law coming to stay with you was about the oldest kind of trouble that there was in the world.

  And he always used to think that with himself it would be different. For that reaso
n he had been, in the past, not a little impatient when other men had spoken about how much sorrow had come into their lives from that moment when they opened the top part of the front door and there was an elderly little lady standing there with suitcases.

  “Looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,” Jurie Steyn declared.

  It was because those married men who spoke like that didn’t have proper feelings, he used to think when he was first married, Chris Welman went on. And he used to think that a man must have a very mean heart if he didn’t have room in it for a frail little old lady standing at the front door with –

  “Not so frail little, either,” Jurie Steyn interjected. “And with her hair fastened back in a tight bun. And sniffing suspiciously if there’s a smell of drink, before she’s got her foot right in over the front step.”

  He also used to think, Chris Welman continued, that if for no other reason than just for his wife’s sake a man should be able to force himself to act in a kindly way towards his mother-in-law, no matter what he thought of her privately.

  If he was anything of a man at all, that was, Chris Welman used to believe. And he never saw anything funny, either, in jokes about a mother-in-law. He used to shake his head in a pitying way when a man told what was to be a comic story about a mother-in-law.

  “And her saying, ‘It’s all right, there’s nothing in that suitcase that can break,’ while you’re carrying it inside for her,” Jurie Steyn said. “Trying to make out that it’s through drink that you stumbled over a chair, when all the time it was because you were nervous.”

  But Chris Welman said that his own ideas underwent a considerable degree of modification as a result of his mother-in-law having come to pay them a somewhat extended visit.

  “Now I come to think of it,” Chris Welman remarked, “she didn’t really stay very long. It only looked like that. And then when it came to the time when it was understood that she would be going back again, she at the last moment stretched out her stay. Once more, I must be honest and admit that she didn’t stretch it out very much. And it wasn’t through her own doing, either, that it happened like that. But people who knew me well, and whom I hadn’t come across over that time, told me how much I had aged since they had last seen me.