As I have said, it was the kaffirs who first took notice of him. They said he was a great witch-doctor. But later on white people also starting taking him presents. And they asked him questions about what was going to happen. Sometimes Mosiko told them what they wanted to know. At other times he was impudent and told them to go and ask Baas Stephanus Erasmus.
You can imagine what a stir this created.
“Yes,” Frans Steyn said to us one afternoon, “and when I asked this kaffir whether my daughter Anna should get married to Gert right away or whether she should go to High School to learn English, Mosiko said that I had to ask Baas Stephanus. ‘Ask him,’ he said, ‘that one is too easy for me’.”
Then the people said that this Mosiko was an impertinent kaffir, and that the only thing Stephanus could do was not to take any notice of him.
I watched closely to see what Erasmus was going to do about it. I could see that the kaffir’s impudence was making him mad. And when people said to him, “Do not take any notice of Mosiko, Oom Stephanus, he is a lazy old kaffir,” anyone could see that this annoyed him more than anything else. He suspected that they said this out of politeness. And there is nothing that angers you more than when those who used to fear you start being polite to you.
The upshot of the business was that Stephanus Erasmus went to the outspan where Mosiko lived. He said he was going to boot him back into the Kalahari, where he came from. Now, it was a mistake for Stephanus to have gone out to see Mosiko. For Mosiko looked really important to have the prophet coming to visit him. The right thing always is for the servant to visit the master.
All of us went along with Stephanus.
On the way down he said, “I’ll kick him all the way out of Zeerust. It is bad enough when kaffirs wear collars and ties in Johannesburg and walk on the pavements reading newspapers. But we can’t allow this sort of thing in the Marico.”
But I could see that for some reason Stephanus was growing angry as we tried to pretend that we were determined to have Mosiko shown up. And this was not the truth. It was only Erasmus’s quarrel. It was not our affair at all.
We got to the outspan.
Mosiko had hardly any clothes on. He sat up against a bush with his back bent and his head forward near his knees. He had many wrinkles. Hundreds of them. He looked to be the oldest man in the world. And yet there was a kind of strength about the curve of his back and I knew the meaning of it. It seemed to me that with his back curved in that way, and the sun shining on him and his head bent forward, Mosiko could be much greater and do more things just by sitting down than other men could do by working hard and using cunning. I felt that Mosiko could sit down and do nothing and yet be more powerful than the Kommandant-General.
He seemed to have nothing but what the sun and the sand and the grass had given him, and yet that was more than what all the men in the world could give him.
I was glad that I was there that day, at the meeting of the wizards.
Stephanus Erasmus knew who Mosiko was, of course. But I wasn’t sure if Mosiko knew Stephanus. So I introduced them. On another day people would have laughed at the way I did it. But at that moment it didn’t seem so funny, somehow.
“Mosiko,” I said, “this is Baas Prophet Stephanus Erasmus.”
“And, Oom Stephanus,” I said, “this is Witch-doctor Mosiko.”
Mosiko raised his eyes slightly and glanced at Erasmus. Erasmus looked straight back at Mosiko and tried to stare him out of countenance. I knew the power with which Stephanus Erasmus could look at you. So I wondered what was going to happen. But Mosiko looked down again, and kept his eyes down on the sand.
Now, I remembered how I felt that day when Stephanus Erasmus had looked at me and I was ready to believe that I was a cut-open springbok. So I was not surprised at Mosiko’s turning away his eyes. But in the same moment I realised that Mosiko looked down in the way that seemed to mean that he didn’t think that Stephanus was a man of enough importance for him to want to stare out of countenance. It was as though he thought there were other things for him to do but look at Stephanus.
Then Mosiko spoke.
“Tell me what you want to know, Baas Stephanus,” he said, “and I’ll prophesy for you.”
I saw the grass and the veld and the stones. I saw a long splash of sunlight on Mosiko’s naked back. But for a little while I neither saw nor heard anything else. For it was a deadly thing that the kaffir had said to the white man. And I knew that the others also felt it was a deadly thing. We stood there, waiting. I was not sure whether to be glad or sorry that I had come. The time seemed so very long in passing.
“Kaffir,” Stephanus said at last, “you have no right to be here on a white man’s outspan. We have come to throw you off it. I am going to kick you, kaffir. Right now I am going to kick you. You’ll see what a white man’s boot is like.”
Mosiko did not move. It did not seem as though he had heard anything Stephanus had said to him. He appeared to be thinking of something else – something very old and very far away.
Then Stephanus took a step forward. He paused for a moment. We all looked down.
Frans Steyn was the first to laugh. It was strange and unnatural at first to hear Frans Steyn’s laughter. Everything up till then had been so tense and even frightening. But immediately afterwards we all burst out laughing together. We laughed loudly and uproariously. You could have heard us right at the other side of the bult.
I have told you about Stephanus Erasmus’s veldskoens, and that they were broken on top. Well, now, in walking to the outspan, the last riem had burst loose, and Stephanus Erasmus stood there with his right foot raised from the ground and a broken shoe dangling from his instep.
Stephanus never kicked Mosiko. When we had finished laughing we got him to come back home. Stephanus walked slowly, carrying the broken shoe in his hand and picking the soft places to walk on, where the burnt grass wouldn’t stick into his bare foot.
Stephanus Erasmus had lost his power.
But I knew that even if his shoe hadn’t broken, Stephanus would never have kicked Mosiko. I could see by that look in his eyes that, when he took the step forward and Mosiko didn’t move, Stephanus had been beaten for always.
Drieka and the Moon
There is a queer witchery about the moon when it is full – Oom Schalk Lourens remarked – especially the moon that hangs over the valley of the Dwarsberge in the summer time. It does strange things to your mind, the Marico moon, and in your heart are wild and fragrant fancies, and your thoughts go very far away. Then, if you have been sitting on your front stoep, thinking these thoughts, you sigh and murmur something about the way of the world, and carry your chair inside.
I have seen the moon in other places besides the Marico. But it is not the same, there.
Braam Venter, the man who fell off the Government lorry once, near Nietverdiend, says that the Marico moon is like a woman laying green flowers on a grave. Braam Venter often says things like that. Particularly since the time he fell off the lorry. He fell on his head, they say.
Always when the moon shines full like that it does something to our hearts that we wonder very much about and that we never understand. Always it awakens memories. And it is singular how different these memories are with each one of us.
Johannes Oberholzer says that the full moon always reminds him of one occasion when he was smuggling cattle over the Bechuanaland border. He says he never sees a full moon without thinking of the way it shone on the steel wire-cutters that he was holding in his hand when two mounted policemen rode up to him. And the next night Johannes Oberholzer again had a good view of the full moon; he saw it through the window of the place he was in. He says the moon was very large and very yellow, except for the black stripes in front of it.
And it was in the light of the full moon that hung over the thorn-trees that I saw Drieka Breytenbach.
Drieka was tall and slender. She had fair hair and blue eyes, and lots of people considered that she was the pretti
est woman in the Marico. I thought so, too, that night I met her under the full moon by the thorn-trees. She had not been in the Bushveld very long. Her husband, Petrus Breytenbach, had met her and married her in the Schweizer-Reneke district, where he had trekked with his cattle for a while during the big drought.
Afterwards, when Petrus Breytenbach was shot dead with his own Mauser by a kaffir working on his farm, Drieka went back to Schweizer-Reneke, leaving the Marico as strangely and as silently as she had come to it.
And it seemed to me that the Marico was a different place because Drieka Breytenbach had gone. And I thought of the moon, and the tricks it plays with your senses, and the stormy witchery that it flings at your soul. And I remembered what Braam Venter said, that the full moon is like a woman laying green flowers on a grave. And it seemed to me that Braam Venter’s words were not so much nonsense, after all, and that worse things could happen to a man than that he should fall off a lorry on his head. And I thought of other matters.
But all this happened only afterwards.
When I saw Drieka that night she was leaning against a thorn-tree beside the road where it goes down to the drift. But I didn’t recognise her at first. All I saw was a figure dressed in white with long hair hanging down loose over its shoulders. It seemed very unusual that a figure should be there like that at such a time of night. I remembered certain stories I had heard about white ghosts. I also remembered that a few miles back I had seen a boulder lying in the middle of the road. It was a fair-sized boulder and it might be dangerous for passing mule-carts. So I decided to turn back at once and move it out of the way.
I decided very quickly about the boulder. And I made up my mind so firmly that the saddle-girth broke from the sudden way in which I jerked my horse back on his haunches. Then the figure came forward and spoke, and I saw it was Drieka Breytenbach.
“Good evening,” I said in answer to her greeting, “I was just going back because I had remembered about something.”
“About ghosts?” she asked.
“No,” I replied truthfully, “about a stone in the road.”
Drieka laughed at that. So I laughed, too. And then Drieka laughed again. And then I laughed. In fact, we did quite a lot of laughing between us. I got off my horse and stood beside Drieka in the moonlight. And if somebody had come along at that moment and said that the predikant’s mule-cart had been capsized by the boulder in the road I would have laughed still more.
That is the sort of thing the moon in the Marico does to you when it is full.
I didn’t think of asking Drieka how she came to be there, or why her hair was hanging down loose, or who it was that she had been waiting for under the thorn-tree. It was enough that the moon was there, big and yellow across the veld, and that the wind blew softly through the trees and across the grass and against Drieka’s white dress and against the mad singing of the stars.
Before I knew what was happening we were seated on the grass under the thorn-tree whose branches leant over the road. And I remember that for quite a while we remained there without talking, sitting side by side on the grass with our feet in the soft sand. And Drieka smiled at me with a misty sort of look in her eyes, and I saw that she was lovely.
I felt that it was not enough that we should go on sitting there in silence. I knew that a woman – even a moon-woman like Drieka – expected a man to be more than just good-humoured and honest. I knew that a woman wanted a man also to be an entertaining companion for her. So I beguiled the passing moments for Drieka with interesting conversation.
I explained to her how a few days before a pebble had worked itself into my veldskoen and had rubbed some skin off the top of one of my toes. I took off my veldskoen and showed her the place. I also told her about the rinderpest and about the way two of my cows had died of the miltsiek. I also knew a lot about blue-tongue in sheep, and about gallamsiekte and the haarwurm, and I talked to her airily about these things, just as easily as I am talking to you.
But, of course, it was the moonlight that did it. I never knew before that I was so good in this idle, butterfly kind of talk. And the whole thing was so innocent, too. I felt that if Drieka Breytenbach’s husband, Petrus, were to come along and find us sitting there side by side, he would not be able to say much about it. At least, not very much.
After a while I stopped talking.
Drieka put her hand in mine.
“Oh, Schalk,” she whispered, and the moon and that misty look were in her blue eyes. “Do tell me some more.”
I shook my head.
“I am sorry, Drieka,” I answered, “I don’t know any more.”
“But you must, Schalk,” she said softly. “Talk to me about – about other things.”
I thought steadily for some moments.
“Yes, Drieka,” I said at length, “I have remembered something. There is one more thing I haven’t told you about the blue-tongue in sheep – ”
“No, no, not that,” she interrupted, “talk to me about other things. About the moon, say.”
So I told her two things that Braam Venter had said about the moon. I told her the green flower one and the other one.
“Braam Venter knows lots more things like that about the moon,” I explained, “you’ll see him next time you go to Zeerust for the Nagmaal. He is a short fellow with a bump on his head from where he fell – ”
“Oh, no, Schalk,” Drieka said again, shaking her head, so that a wisp of her fair hair brushed against my face, “I don’t want to know about Braam Venter. Only about you. You think out something on your own about the moon and tell it to me.”
I understood what she meant.
“Well, Drieka,” I said thoughtfully. “The moon – the moon is all right.”
“Oh, Schalk,” Drieka cried. “That’s much finer than anything Braam Venter could ever say – even with that bump on his head.”
Of course, I told her that it was nothing and that I could perhaps say something even better if I tried. But I was very proud, all the same. And somehow it seemed that my words brought us close together. I felt that that handful of words, spoken under the full moon, had made a new and witch thing come into the life of Drieka and me.
We were holding hands then, sitting on the grass with our feet in the road, and Drieka leant her head on my shoulder, and her long hair stirred softly against my face, but I looked only at her feet. And I thought for a moment that I loved her. And I did not love her because her body was beautiful, or because she had red lips, or because her eyes were blue. In that moment I did not understand about her body or her lips or her eyes. I loved her for her feet; and because her feet were in the road next to mine.
And yet all the time I felt, far away at the back of my mind, that it was the moon that was doing these things to me.
“You have got good feet for walking on,” I said to Drieka.
“Braam Venter would have said that I have got good feet for dancing on,” Drieka answered, laughing. And I began to grow jealous of Braam Venter.
The next thing I knew was that Drieka had thrown herself into my arms.
“Do you think I am very beautiful, Schalk?” Drieka asked.
“You are very beautiful, Drieka,” I answered slowly, “very beautiful.”
“Will you do something for me, Schalk?” Drieka asked again, and her red lips were very close to my cheek. “Will you do something for me if I love you very much?”
“What do you want me to do, Drieka?”
She drew my head down to her lips and whispered hot words in my ear.
And so it came about that I thrust her from me, suddenly. I jumped unsteadily to my feet; I found my horse and rode away. I left Drieka Breytenbach where I had found her, under the thorn-tree by the roadside, with her hot whisperings still ringing in my ears, and before I reached home the moon had set behind the Dwarsberge.
Well, there is not much left for me to tell you. In the days that followed, Drieka Breytenbach was always in my thoughts. Her long, loose hair and her
red lips and her feet that had been in the roadside sand with mine. But if she really was the ghost that I had at first taken her to be, I could not have been more afraid of her.
And it seemed singular that, while it had been my words, spoken in the moonlight, that helped to bring Drieka and me closer together, it was Drieka’s hot breath, whispering wild words in my ear, that sent me so suddenly from her side.
Once or twice I even felt sorry for having left in that fashion.
And later on when I heard that Drieka Breytenbach had gone back to Schweizer-Reneke, and that her husband had been shot dead with his own Mauser by one of the farm kaffirs, I was not surprised. In fact, I had expected it.
Only it did not seem right, somehow, that Drieka should have got a kaffir to do the thing that I had refused to do.
Mampoer
The berries of the kareeboom (Oom Schalk Lourens said, nodding his head in the direction of the tall tree whose shadows were creeping towards the edge of the stoep) may not make the best kind of mampoer that there is. What I mean is that karee brandy is not as potent as the brandy you distil from moepels or maroelas. Even peach brandy, they say, can make you forget the rust in the corn quicker than the mampoer you make from karee-berries.
But karee mampoer is white and soft to look at, and the smoke that comes from it when you pull the cork out of the bottle is pale and rises up in slow curves. And in time of drought, when you have been standing at the borehole all day, pumping water for the cattle, so that by the evening water has got a bitter taste for you, then it is very soothing to sit on the front stoep, like now, and to get somebody to pull the cork out of a bottle of this kind of mampoer. Your hands will be sore and stiff from the pump-handle, so that if you try and pull it out yourself the cork will seem as deep down in the bottle as the water is in the borehole.
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