To Hendrik van Jaarsveld his companion’s words sounded harsh and grating. He wished Piet would keep quiet. Like the kaffirs. They knew that death was a solemn thing. And the veld knew it, too. The veld was still – very still. Always the veld is still in the presence of death.
Suddenly Hendrik grew afraid. It was a vague fear he couldn’t understand. But it made him feel very lonely. He seemed to be alone under the sky with the dead herdsman. The corpse and he seemed to be alone together. Piet and the kaffirs were apart from him somehow. He remembered having had that same feeling once before when he had shot a ribbok.
He had disembowelled the ribbok and was fastening two of its legs together so that he could carry it home across his shoulders. It was then that that strange feeling came to him, a feeling of intimacy and understanding with the dead ribbok. Now, when he was standing over the herdsman and getting ready to lower him into the grave, that queer sense of companionship with the dead came to him again. It was frightening.
In the heat of the tropic noonday Hendrik shivered.
Piet Uys spoke again.
“Did you see the mamba?” he asked.
“Yes,” Hendrik answered shortly.
“Did he see the mamba?” Piet asked again.
“No,” Hendrik replied.
Hendrik had noticed that Piet refrained from mentioning the dead herdsman by name. Here was something inexplicable for you, Hendrik reflected. As soon as a man died you were afraid to go on talking of him by name. It was a singular thing.
“Yes, they say it is very often the case,” Piet remarked. Hendrik started. But Piet’s next words showed that he had not really broken in on Hendrik’s thoughts. Still, it was disquieting.
“Yes,” Piet went on, “they say that very often when you get bitten by a mamba, you die without having seen the snake. The mamba just glides out of the grass behind you and is gone again before you quite know what has happened. The whole thing is so sudden.”
Hendrik did not answer. For some reason he did not want Piet to have the satisfaction of being told that his reconstruction of the incident was correct. Nevertheless, that was just how the thing had occurred. The herdsman was walking towards the wagon. He shouted something, not very loudly. And the next thing that Hendrik saw were brown coils vanishing into the grass with lightning movements, and the herdsman falling beside the wagon in a quivering heap. In his mind Hendrik could still see the glint of the sun on the sleek brown body of the snake.
“They also say – ” Piet Uys began again.
But Hendrik interrupted him.
He did not like the callous way in which Piet spoke about those things. Just as though it were an ordinary matter for a man to die like this, of snakebite, before their eyes, without his having had time, even, to make his peace with God. “You are older than I, Oom Piet,” Hendrik said. “Will you pray?” By that time the body had been lowered into the earth.
The white men stood together on one side of the grave. The kaffirs crowded together in a bunch on the other side. They were all bareheaded. Piet Uys did not pray long.
“Amen,” Hendrik said when Piet had finished.
“Amen,” the kaffirs said after him, self-conscious on account of their unfamiliarity with the white man’s burial rites. They were Bechuanas, and had a different way of disposing of the dead.
“Anyway, he was a good kaffir,” Piet Uys said, flinging a handful of earth into the grave, “we will sing a hymn for him, too. We will sing ‘Rust Myn Ziel’.”
Accordingly, the two white men sang a verse of this Dutch Reformed Church hymn, the kaffirs joining in as best they could.
Then the grave was covered up and the burial was over.
Hendrik van Jaarsveld was glad that the rainy season was approaching, bringing with it the prospect of the termination of the drought in Schweizer-Reneke. Then he could inspan his ox-wagon and trek home with his cattle. It was unnatural living alone like this in the bush with Piet Uys and the kaffirs. He wanted company.
It was very difficult having only one white man to talk to all the time, he decided. Especially when that man was Piet Uys. Piet said such stupid things, too. For instance, after the burial of the herdsman, he had said: “You know, Hendrik, they say that lightning never strikes in the same place twice. Well, it’s the same with a mamba. It never strikes twice in the same place, either.”
At this Piet had slapped Hendrik on the shoulder, expecting him to join in the joke – whatever it was.
“That’s a good one, isn’t it, Hendrik?” Piet said, “and I thought it out myself.”
“I hope we’re back in Schweizer-Reneke before you think out the next one,” Hendrik answered; then, because Piet looked at him questioningly, he added quickly, “I mean, so that you will have more people to tell it to.”
“I see,” Piet answered, and turned away.
Since then their relations had been strained.
Piet had gone into the bush after game and Hendrik was glad to be alone. He sat on a fallen tree-trunk and gazed absently in the direction in which Piet had gone.
A rifle report rang out, echoing from krantz to krantz across the veld. Hendrik knew there would be no further shots. That was Piet Uys’s way. He would go on patiently stalking a buck for hours on end, and he never fired until he was absolutely sure of his shot. It was Piet’s boast that he always went with only one cartridge in his Mauser, and that he invariably brought back either a buck or the live cartridge.
From the distance of the report Hendrik worked it out that Piet would be back fairly soon. He didn’t relish that very much. It was pleasant sitting alone in the sun, on a tree-trunk that had been hollowed out by the white ants.
Suddenly, as he pictured Piet bending over the buck, slashing away into the warm flesh with his hunting knife, Hendrik realised that he was again becoming subject to that sense of intimacy with dead things – the feeling that possessed him when he disembowelled the ribbok in the vlakte – the feeling that had come to him when he wrapped the dead herdsman in the blanket.
He was frightened.
He looked around. If only he could see a kaffir he would feel better. But he remembered that the kaffirs were all away with the cattle. He was shivering. The Marico was an unhealthy place to be in, he reflected. The sun and the stones and the thorn-trees. It was maddening. Nothing but thorn-trees and stones and the sun. It was a good country to come to once in a while. But you hadn’t to stay long. And you must have company. You must have somebody with you who wasn’t like Piet Uys.
He thought of Piet, walking through the bush, with a buck slung over his shoulder, every step bringing him nearer. Well, perhaps even Piet was better than this intense loneliness. He stared out into the bush. Piet wouldn’t be long now.
But there was that buck that Piet would be carrying. Hendrik decided that he might even try to talk to Piet about this queer feeling that overtook him now and then. It was just possible that Piet might understand. He might even have had similar queer emotions about things.
Yes, when Piet came, he would talk to him about it.
Shortly afterwards Piet came. Hendrik saw him through the trees. He took off his hat and waved. Piet waved back. Suddenly Hendrik felt, darting through his left hand, a monstrous pain. He saw Piet fling down his rifle and the buck and come running up towards him. Then Hendrik slipped from the tree-trunk and, with his hand pressed tight under his armpit, rolled over and over in the grass.
He came to rest with his legs on an ant-hill and his head in a slight depression. It was a funny sort of way to lie, Hendrik thought. But what seemed stranger still, was that the pain, which for a while had swept through and through his whole body, had left him. He remembered thrusting his hand into his armpit. He would remove it and find out what caused the pain.
But he couldn’t move his hand. That was queer. He wanted to sit up. He couldn’t do that either.
“Piet,” he tried to call. But his lips remained motionless, and no sound came.
That was funny, He
ndrik thought.
Then when Piet Uys approached and took off his hat very slowly, Hendrik van Jaarsveld understood.
“God, how terrible,” Piet Uys said, “and how easily it might have been me.”
Dream by the Bluegums
In the heat of the midday – Oom Schalk Lourens said – Adriaan Naudé and I were glad to be resting there, shaded by the tall bluegums that stood in a clump by the side of the road.
I sat on the grass, with my head and shoulders supported against a large stone. Adriaan Naudé who had begun by leaning against a tree-trunk with his legs crossed and his fingers interlaced behind his head and his elbows out, lowered himself to the ground by degrees; for a short while he remained seated on his haunches; then he sighed and slid forward, very carefully, until he was lying stretched out at full length, with his face in the grass.
And all this while Adriaan Naudé was murmuring about how lazy kaffirs are, and about the fact that the kaffir Jonas should already have returned with the mule-cart, and about how, if you wanted a job done properly, you had to do it yourself. I agreed with Adriaan Naudé that Jonas had been away rather long with the mule-cart; he ought to be back quite soon, now, I said.
“The curse of the Transvaal,” Adriaan Naudé explained, stretching himself out further along the grass, and yawning, “the curse of the Transvaal is the indolence of the kaffirs.”
“Yes, Neef Adriaan,” I replied. “You are quite correct. It would perhaps have been better if one of us had gone along in the mule-cart with Jonas.”
“It’s not so bad for you, Neef Schalk,” Adriaan Naudé went on, yawning again. “You have got a big comfortable stone to rest your head and shoulders against. Whereas I have got to lie flat down on the dry grass with all the sharp points sticking into me. You are always like that, Neef Schalk. You always pick the best for yourself.”
By the unreasonable nature of his remarks I could tell that Adriaan Naudé was being overtaken by a spell of drowsiness.
“You are always like that,” Adriaan went on. “It’s one of the low traits of your character. Always picking the best for yourself. There was that time in Zeerust, for instance. People always mention that – when they want to talk about how low a man can be . . .”
I could see that the heat of the day and his condition of being half-asleep might lead Adriaan Naudé to say things that he would no doubt be sorry for afterwards. So I interrupted him, speaking very earnestly for his own good.
“It’s quite true, Neef Adriaan,” I said, “that this stone against which I am lying is the only one in the vicinity. But I can’t help that any more than I can help this clump of bluegums being here. It’s funny about these bluegums, now, growing like this by the side of the road, when the rest of the veld around here is bare. I wonder who planted them. As for this stone, Neef Adriaan, it is not my fault that I saw it first. It was just luck. But you can knock out your pipe against it whenever you want to.”
This offer seemed to satisfy Adriaan. At all events, he didn’t pursue the argument. I noticed that his breathing had become very slow and deep and regular; and the last remark that he made was so muffled as to be almost unintelligible. It was: “To think that a white man can fall so low.”
From that I judged that Adriaan Naudé was dreaming about something.
It was very pleasant, there, on the yellow grass, by the roadside, underneath the bluegums, whose shadows slowly lengthened as midday passed into afternoon. Nowhere was there sound or movement. The whole world was at rest, with the silence of the dust on the deserted road, with the peace of the bluegums’ shadows. My companion’s measured breathing seemed to come from very far away.
Then it was that a strange thing happened.
What is in the first place remarkable about the circumstance that I am now going to relate to you is that it shows you clearly how short a dream is. And how much you can dream in just a few moments. In the second place, as you’ll see when I get to the end of it, this story proves how right in broad daylight a queer thing can take place – almost in front of your eyes, as it were – and you may wonder about it for ever afterwards, and you will never understand it.
Well, as I was saying, what with Adriaan Naudé lying asleep within a few feet of me, and everything being so still, I was on the point of also dropping off to sleep, when, in the distance – so small that I could barely distinguish its outlines – I caught sight of the mule-cart whose return Adriaan and I were awaiting. From where I lay, with my head on the stone, I had a clear view of the road all the way up to where it disappeared over the bult.
For a while I lay watching the approach of the mule-cart. As I have said, it was still very far away. But gradually it drew nearer and I made out more of the details. The dark forms of the mules. The shadowy figure of Jonas, the driver.
But as I gazed I felt my eyelids getting heavy. I told myself that with the glare of the sun on the road I would not be able to keep my eyes open much longer. I remember thinking how foolish it would be to fall asleep, then, with the mule-cart only a short distance away. It would pull up almost immediately, and I would have to wake up again. I told myself I was being foolish – and, of course, I fell asleep.
It was while I was still telling myself that in a few moments the mule-cart would be coming to a stop in the shadow of the bluegums that my eyes closed and I fell asleep. And I started to dream. And from this you can tell how swift a thing a dream is, and how much you can dream in a few moments.
For I know the exact moment in which I started to dream. It was when I was looking very intently at the driver of the mule-cart and I suddenly saw, to my amazement, that the driver was no longer Jonas, the kaffir, but Adriaan Naudé and seated beside Adriaan Naudé was a girl in a white frock. She had yellow hair that hung far down over her shoulders and her name was Francina. The next minute the mule-cart drew up and Jonas jumped off and tied the reins to a wheel.
So it was in between those flying moments that I dreamt about Adriaan Naudé and Francina.
“It is difficult to believe, Francina,” Adriaan Naudé was saying, nodding his head in my direction, “it is difficult to believe that a white man can sink so low. If I tell you what happened in Zeerust – ”
I was getting annoyed, now. After all, Francina was a complete stranger, and Adriaan had no right to slander me in that fashion. What was more, I had a very simple explanation of the Zeerust incident. I felt that if only I could be alone with Francina for a few minutes I would be able to convince her that what had happened in Zeerust was not to my discredit at all.
Furthermore, I would be able to tell her one or two things about Adriaan; things of so unfortunate a character that even if she believed about the Zeerust affair it would not matter much. Because, compared with Adriaan Naudé the most inferior kind of man would still look as noble and heroic as Wolraad Woltemade that you read about in the school books.
But even as I started to talk to Francina I realised that there was no need for me to say anything. She put her hand on my arm and looked at me; and the sun was on her hair and the shadows of the bluegums were in her eyes; and by the way she smiled at me I knew that nothing Adriaan could say about me would ever make any difference to her.
Moreover, Adriaan Naudé had gone. You know how it is in a dream. He had completely disappeared, leaving Francina and me alone by the roadside. And I knew that Adriaan Naudé would not trouble us any more. All he had come there for was to bring Francina along to me. Yet I regretted his departure, somehow. It seemed too easy, almost. There were a couple of things about Adriaan Naudé that I felt Francina really ought to know.
Then it all changed, suddenly. I seemed to know that it was only a dream and that I wasn’t really standing up under the trees with Francina. I seemed to know that I was actually resting on the grass, with my head and shoulders resting against a stone. I even heard the mule-cart jolting over the rough part of the road.
But in the next instant I was dreaming again.
I dreamt that Francina wa
s explaining to me, in gentle and sorrowful tones, that she couldn’t stay any longer; and that she had put her hand on my arm for the last time, in farewell; she said I was not to follow her, but that I had to close my eyes when she turned away; for no one was to know where she had come from.
While she was saying these things my eyes lighted on her frock, which was brilliant in the sunshine. But it seemed an old-fashioned sort of frock; the kind that was worn many years before. Then, in the same moment, I saw her face, and it seemed to me that her smile was old-fashioned, somehow. It was a sweet smile, and her face, turned upwards, was strangely beautiful; but I felt in some queer way that women had smiled like that very long ago.
It was a vivid dream. Part of it seemed more real than life; as is frequently the case with a dream on the veld, fleetingly, in the heat of the noonday.
I asked Francina where she lived.
“Not far from here,” she answered, “no, not far. But you may not follow me. None may go back with me.”
She still smiled, in that way in which women smiled long ago; but as she spoke there came into her eyes a look of such intense sorrow that I was afraid to ask why I could not accompany her. And when she told me to close my eyes I had no power to protest.
And, of course, I didn’t close my eyes. Instead, I opened them. Just as Jonas was jumping down from the mule-cart to fasten the reins on to a wheel.
Adriaan Naudé woke up about the same time that I did, and asked Jonas why he had been away so long, and spoke more about the indolence of the kaffirs. And I got up from the grass and stretched my limbs and wondered about dreams. It seemed incredible that I could have dreamt so much in such a few moments.
And there was a strange sadness in my heart because the dream had gone. My mind was filled with a deep sense of loss. I told myself that it was foolish to have feelings like that about a dream, even though it was a particularly vivid dream, and part of it seemed more real than life.
Mafeking Road Page 8