Читать книгу The Complete Voorkamer Stories - Herman Charles Bosman - Страница 17

Because it was nearing the end of the Volksraad session, it was decided that a deputation of Dwarsberg farmers would go and call on the member when he got back to Pretoria. Over the generations it had developed into an institution – a deputation of farmers going to see the Volksraad member about a railway line through the Bushveld.

The promise of a railway line was an essential part of any election speech delivered north of Sephton’s Nek. A candidate would no more contemplate leaving that promise out of his speech than he would think of omitting the joke about the Cape Coloured man who went to sleep in the graveyard. For a candidate not to mention the railway line through the Bushveld would be just as much of a shock to his constituents as if the candidate had forgotten to ask an ouderling to open the meeting with prayer.

But we never seemed to get that railway line, somehow.

“What’s the good of a deputation, anyway?” Jurie Steyn asked. “When you think of what happened to the last deputation, I mean. Or take the deputation before that, when I was one of the delegates. Well, I’ll say this much for our Volksraad member – he did take us to the bioscope, because we were strangers to Pretoria. And he spoke up for us, too, when a girl with yellow hair sitting in a glass compartment asked how far from the front we wanted to be. And our Volksraad member said not too near the front, because it was a film with shooting in it, and he didn’t want anything to happen to us, seeing how we were his constituents.”

Jurie Steyn said that the girl with yellow hair and a military-looking man in a red-and-gold uniform who opened the door for them – because they were friends of the Volksraad member, no doubt – laughed a good deal.

“I must say that our Volksraad member is very considerate that way,” Jurie Steyn added. “It made us feel at home in the city, straight off, having that pretty girl and that high army man so friendly and everything. When we came out of the bioscope and they saw us again, the two of them started laughing right from the beginning, almost. That made us feel as though we belonged, if you understand what I mean.”

Then Gysbert van Tonder told us about the time when he was a member of a railway-line deputation in Pretoria. And he said the same thing about how thoughtful the Volksraad member was in regard to giving the delegates pleasure.

“He took us to the merry-go-round,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “To right in front of the merry-go-round, as far as his motor-car could go. And he told the man who collected the tickets that we were friends of his from the platteland and that the man must keep a look out to see that Oom Kasper Geel’s beard didn’t get tangled in the machinery that made the horses turn round and round. So everything was very friendly, straight away. You’ve got to admit that our Volksraad member has got a touch for that sort of thing. The man that our Volksraad member spoke to about us nearly fell off the merry-go-round himself, laughing.”

We all said that we knew, of course, that a delegation that we sent from the Bushveld to Pretoria about the railway line could always be sure of a good time. Our Volksraad member never minded how much trouble he put himself to in the way of introducing the delegation to the best people, and providing the delegation with the classiest entertainments that the big city offered, and making the delegation feel really at home through the things he said about the delegation to persons standing around. Like the time he bought the delegates a packet of bananas and a tin of fish and he showed them where they could go and eat it.

“He went with us right up to the building,” Gysbert van Tonder, who was one of the delegates on that occasion also, said. “In fact, he took us right in at the front door. There were koedoe and gemsbok and tsessebe horns all round the walls, just like in my voorkamer. But big – you’ve got no idea how big. And grand – all along the walls were glass cases and stuffed giraffes and medals with gold and brass flower-pots and things. It was the finest dining room you could ever imagine. And our Volksraad member told the owner of the place that we were from his constituency and that he must look after us and that, above all, he mustn’t keep us there. The owner, who was dressed all in blue, with a blue cap, laughed a lot, then, and so we were all as at home, there, as you please, and he showed us what staircase we had to go up by.”

Gysbert van Tonder said that all they found to sit on, upstairs, was a tamboetie riempiesbank with a piece of string in front of it, that they had to unfasten, first. It was a comfortable enough riempiesbank, Gysbert said, but a bit on the old-fashioned side, he thought. On the left was a statue in white stone of a young woman without much clothes on who was bending forward with her arms folded, because of the cold. On the right was a stuffed hippopotamus.

Gysbert van Tonder said that the delegation felt that the Volksraad member had that time done them really proud – using his influence to provide them with elegant surroundings in which to eat their bananas and tinned fish, which they opened with a pocket knife.

But there was some sort of unfortunate misunderstanding about it afterwards, Gysbert van Tonder added. That was when another man wearing a blue suit and a blue cap came up and spoke to them. This man looked older than the owner and he was shorter and fatter. They took him to be the owner’s father-in-law. And he spoke about the banana peels lying on the floor and about their sitting calm as you like on a historical riempiesbank that hadn’t been in use for over a hundred and fifty years. But mostly the owner’s father-in-law spoke about the fish oil that had got splashed on the behind part of the young woman without clothes on when the pocket knife slipped that the delegates had opened the tin with.

“And although we said to the owner’s father-in-law that we were railway-line delegates from the Dwarsberge, it didn’t seem to make much difference,” Gysbert van Tonder finished up. “He said we weren’t on the railway line now. I must say that I did feel afterwards that what the Volksraad member arranged for our happiness and comfort that time was a bit too stylish.”

And Jurie Steyn said that after all that we still didn’t get a railway line, or anywhere near. All that happened, he remembered, was that the Government arranged for the weekly lorry through the Bushveld from Bekkersdal to be given a new coat of light-green paint.

Then Oupa Bekker started telling us about the first railway-line deputation from the Dwarsberge that ever went to Pretoria. He was a member of that deputation.

“The railway engine was quite different from what it’s like today, of course,” Oupa Bekker said. “It had a long thin chimney curving up from in front of it, I remember. And above the wheels it was all open and you could see right into the works and things. In the same way, I suppose, a Bushveld railway delegation in those days would have looked a lot different from the kind of deputation that will be going to Pretoria again at the end of the Volksraad session next month.”

But he said that with the years the principle of the thing hadn’t changed so you would notice.

“We had written to our Volksraad member to say we were coming, and what it was about,” Oupa Bekker continued. “And when he received us he was most sympathetic. He received us in his hotel room and he had a bottle of brandy sent up and he said it had to be the best, because only that was good enough for us. He said that in his opinion steam had come to stay and he showed us a lot of coloured pictures of engines that he had cut out of children’s papers. And he asked us would we rather have a condensing or a low-pressure engine.

“Afterwards a man with black side-whiskers and wearing a stiff collar came into the hotel room and the Volksraad member told us that he was a civil engineer and could help us a lot. The civil engineer started talking to us straight away about how important it was that we should have the right kind of printing on our railway timetables. We could see from that what a fine, full sort of mind the civil engineer had – a brain that took in everything. He also spoke about the kind of buns that we would sell in the station tea-rooms.

“Later on, with the brandy and the talk, the civil engineer got really friendly, and started calling us by our first names, and all. We saw then that, in spite of his full mind, there was a playful side to him, also. Indeed, after a while, the civil engineer got so playful that he brought out three little thimbles and a pea, that he had found in one of his pockets. And, just to sort of pass the time, he asked us to guess under which thimble the pea was hidden.”

Oupa Bekker sighed.

“All the same,” he remarked, “that Volksraad member was a real gentleman. There are not many like him today. When he saw us back to the coach station he was apologising all the way because the civil engineer had cleaned us out.”