Читать книгу The Complete Voorkamer Stories - Herman Charles Bosman - Страница 9

The stranger who arrived on the Government lorry from Bekkersdal told us that his name was Losper. He was having a look round that part of the Marico, he said, and he did not expect to stay more than a few days. He was dressed in city clothes and carried a leather briefcase. But because he did not wear pointed black shoes and did not say how sad it was that Flip Prinsloo should have died so suddenly at the age of sixty-eight, of snakebite, we knew that he was not a life insurance agent. Furthermore, because he did not once seek to steer the conversation round to the sinful practices of some people who offered a man a quite substantial bribe when he was just carrying out his duty, we also knew that the stranger was not a plain-clothes man who had been sent round to investigate the increase in cattle-smuggling over the Conventie-lyn. Quite a number of us breathed more easily, then.

Nevertheless, we were naturally intrigued to know what Meneer Losper had come there for. But with the exception of Gysbert van Tonder – who did not have much manners since the time he had accompanied a couple of Americans on safari to the lower reaches of the Limpopo – we were all too polite to ask a man straight out what his business was, and then explain to him how he could do it better.

That trip with the two Americans influenced Gysbert van Tonder’s mind, all right. For he came back talking very loudly. And he bought a waistcoat at the Indian store especially so that he could carry a cigar in it. And he spoke of himself as Gysbert O. van Tonder. And he once also slapped Dominee Welthagen on the back to express his appreciation of the Nagmaal sermon Dominee Welthagen had delivered on the Holy Patriarchs and the Prophets.

When Gysbert van Tonder came back from that journey, we understood how right the Voortrekker, Hendrik Potgieter, had been over a hundred years ago, when he said that the parts around the lower end of the Limpopo were no fit place for a white man.

We asked Gysbert van Tonder how that part of the country affected the two Americans. And he said he did not think it affected them much. But it was a queer sort of area, all round, Gysbert explained. And there was a lot of that back-slapping business, too. He said he could still remember how one of the Americans slapped Chief Umfutusu on the back and how Chief Umfutusu, in his turn, slapped the American on the ear with a clay pot full of greenish drink that the chief was holding in his hand at the time.

The American was very pleased about it, Gysbert van Tonder said, and he devoted a lot of space to it in his diary. The American classed Chief Umfutusu’s action as among the less understood tribal customs that had to do with welcoming distinguished white travellers. Later on, when Gysbert van Tonder and the Americans came to a Mshangaan village that was having some trouble with hut tax, the American who kept the diary was able to write a lot more about what he called an obscure African ritual that that tribe observed in welcoming a superior order of stranger. For that whole Mshangaan village, men, women and children, had rushed out and pelted Gysbert and the two Americans with wet cow-dung.

In his diary the American compared this incident with the ceremonial greeting that a tribe of Bavendas once accorded the explorer Stanley, when they threw him backwards into a dam – to show respect, as Stanley explained, afterwards.

Well anyway, here was this stranger, Losper, a middle-aged man with a suitcase, sitting in the post office and asking Jurie Steyn if he could put him up in a spare room for a few days, while he had a look round.

“I’ll pay the same rates as I paid in the Boardinghouse in Zeerust,” Meneer Losper said. “Not that I think you might overcharge me, of course, but I am only allowed a fixed sum by the department for accommodation and travelling expenses.”

“Look here, Neef Losper,” Jurie Steyn said, “you didn’t tell me your first name, so I can only call you Neef Losper –”

“My first name is Org,” the stranger said.

“Well, then, Neef Org,” Jurie Steyn went on. “From the way you talk I can see that you are unacquainted with the customs of the Groot Marico. In the first place, I am a postmaster and a farmer. I don’t know which is the worst job, what with money orders and the blue-tongue. I have got to put axle-grease on my mule-cart and sealing wax on the mailbag. And sometimes I get mixed up. Any man in my position would. One day I’ll paste a revenue stamp on my off-mule and I’ll brand a half-moon and a bar on the Bekkersdal mailbag. Then there will be trouble. There will be trouble with my off-mule, I mean. The post office won’t notice any difference. But my off-mule is funny, that way. He’ll pull the mule-cart, all right. But then everything has got to be the way he wants it. He won’t have people laughing at him because he’s got a revenue stamp stuck on his behind. I sometimes think that my off-mule knows that a shilling revenue stamp is what you put on a piece of paper after you’ve told a justice of the peace a lot of lies –”

“Not lies,” Gysbert van Tonder interjected.

“A lot of lies,” Jurie Steyn went on, “about another man’s cattle straying into a person’s lucerne lands while that person was taking his sick child to Zeerust –”

Gysbert van Tonder, who was Jurie Steyn’s neighbour, half rose out of his riempies chair, then, and made some sneering remarks about Jurie Steyn and his off-mule. He said he never had much time for either of them. And he said he would not like to describe the way his lucerne lands looked after Jurie Steyn’s cattle had finished straying over them. He said he would not like to use that expression, because there was a stranger present.

Meneer Losper seemed interested, then, and sat well forward to listen. And it looked as though Gysbert van Tonder would have said the words, too. Only, At Naudé, who has a wireless to which he listens in regularly, put a stop to the argument. He said that this was a respectable voorkamer, with family portraits on the wall.

“And there’s Jurie Steyn’s wife in the kitchen, too,” At Naudé said. “You can’t use the same sort of language here as in the Volksraad, where there are all men.”

Actually, Jurie Steyn’s wife had gone out of the kitchen, about then. Ever since that young schoolmaster with the black hair parted in the middle had come to Bekkersdal, Jurie Steyn’s wife had taken a good deal of interest in education matters. Consequently, when the stranger, Org Losper, said he was from the department, Jurie Steyn’s wife thought right away – judging from his shifty appearance – that he might be a school inspector. And so sent a message to the young schoolmaster to warn him in time, so that he could put away the saws and hammers that he used for the private fretwork that he did in front of the class while the children were writing compositions.

In the meantime, Jurie Steyn was getting to the point.

“So you can’t expect me to be running a Boardinghouse as well as everything else, Neef Org,” he was saying. “But all the same, you are welcome to stay. And you can stay as long as you like. Only, you must not offer again to pay. If you had known more about these parts, you would also have known that the Groot Marico has got a very fine reputation for hospitality. When you come and stay with a man he gets insulted if you offer him money. But I shall be glad to invite you into my home as a member of my own family.”

Then Org Losper said that that was exactly what he didn’t want, anymore. And he was firm about it, too.

“When you’re a member of the family, you can’t say no to anything,” he explained. “In the Pilanesberg I tore my best trousers on the wire. I was helping, as a member of the family, to round up the donkeys for the watercart. At Nietverdiend a Large White bit a piece out of my second-best trousers and my leg. That was when I was a member of the family and was helping to carry buckets of swill to the pig troughs. The farmer said the Large White was just being playful that day. Well, maybe the Large White thought I was also a member of the family – his family, I mean. At Abjaterskop I nearly fell into a disused mineshaft on a farm there. Then I was a member of the family, assisting to throw a dead bull down the shaft. The bull had died of anthrax and I was helping to pull him by one haunch and I was walking backwards and when I jumped away from the opening of the mineshaft it was almost too late.

“I can also tell you what happened to me in the Dwarsberge when I was also a member of the family. And also about what happened when I was a member of the family at Derdepoort. I did not know that that family was having a misunderstanding with the family next door about water rights. And it was when I was opening a water furrow with a shovel that a load of buckshot went through my hat. As a member of the family, I was standing ankle-deep in the mud at the time, and so I couldn’t run very fast. So you see, when I say I would rather pay, it is not that I am ignorant of the very fine tradition that the Marico has for the friendly and bountiful entertainment that it accords the stranger. But I do not wish to presume further on your kindness. If I have much more Bushveld hospitality I might never see my wife and children again. It’s all very well being a member of somebody else’s family. But I have a duty to my own family. I want to get back to them alive.”

Johnny Coen remarked that next time Gysbert van Tonder had an American tourist on his hands, he need not take him to the Limpopo, but could just show him around the Marico farms.

It was then that Gysbert van Tonder asked Org Losper straight out what his business was. And, to our surprise, the stranger was very frank about it.

“It is a new job that has been made for me by the Department of Defence,” Org Losper said. “There wasn’t that post before. You see, I worked very hard at the last elections, getting people’s names taken off the electoral roll. You have no idea how many names I got taken off. I even got some of our candidate’s supporters crossed off. But you know how it is, we all make mistakes. It is a very secret post. It is a top Defence secret. I am under oath not to disclose anything about it. But I am free to tell you that I am making certain investigations on behalf of the Department of Defence. I am trying to find out whether something has been seen here. But, of course, the post has been made for me, if you understand what I mean.”

We said we understood, all right. And we also knew that, since he was under oath about it, the nature of Org Losper’s investigations in the Groot Marico would leak out sooner or later.

As it happened, we found out within the next couple of days. A Mahalapi who worked for Adriaan Geel told us. And then we realised how difficult Org Losper’s work was. And we no longer envied him his Government job – even though it had been especially created for him.

If you know the Mtosas, you’ll understand why Org Losper’s job was so hard. For instance, there was only one member of the whole Mtosa tribe who had ever had any close contact with white men. And he had unfortunately grown up among Trekboers, whose last piece of crockery that they had brought with them from the Cape had got broken almost a generation earlier.

We felt that the Department of Defence could have made an easier job for Org Losper than to send him round asking those questions of the Mtosas, they who did not even know what ordinary kitchen saucers were, leave alone flying ones.