Читать книгу The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories - Herman Charles Bosman - Страница 7

After her father’s death, Oom Schalk Lourens said, Francina Malherbe was left alone on the farm Maroelasdal. We all wondered then what she would do. She was close on to thirty, and in the Bushveld, when a girl is not married by twenty-five, you can be quite certain that she won’t get a man anymore. Unless she has got money. And even then if she gets married at about thirty she is liable to be left afterwards with neither money nor husband. Look at what happened to Grieta Steyn.

But with Francina Malherbe it was different.

I remember Francina as a child. She was young when Flip first trekked into the Bushveld. There was an unlucky man for you. Just the year after he had settled on Maroelasdal the rinderpest broke out and killed off all his cattle. That was a bad time for all of us. But Flip Malherbe suffered most. Then, for the first time that anybody in the Marico District could remember, a pack of wolves came out of the Kalahari, driven into the Transvaal by the hunger. For in the Kalahari nearly all the game had died with the rinderpest. Maroelasdal was the nearest farm to the border, and in one night, as Flip told us, the wolves got into his kraal and tore the insides out of three hundred of his sheep. This was all the more remarkable, because Flip, to my knowledge, had never owned more than fifty sheep.

Then Flip Malherbe’s wife died of the lung disease, and shortly afterwards also his two younger sons who were always delicate. That left only Francina, who was then about fifteen. All those troubles turned Flip’s head a little. That year the Government voted money for the relief of farmers who had suffered from the rinderpest, and Flip put in a claim. He got paid quite a lot of money, but he spent most of it in Zeerust on drink. Then Flip went to the school-teacher and asked him if the Government would not give him compensation also because his wife and his sons had died, but the teacher, who did not know that Flip had become strange in the head, only laughed at him. Often after that, Flip told us that he was sorry his wife and children had died of the lung disease instead of the rinderpest, because otherwise he could have put in a claim for them.

Francina left school and set to work looking after the farm. With what was left out of the money Flip had got from the Government, she bought a few head of cattle. When the rains came she bought seed mealies and set the kaffir squatters ploughing in the vlakte. For three months in the year, by law, the kaffirs have to work for the white man on whose land they live. But you know what it is with kaffirs. As soon as they saw that there was no man on the farm who would see to it that they worked, the kaffirs ploughed only a little every day for Flip and spent the rest of the time in working for themselves. Francina spoke to her father about it, but it was no good. Flip just sat in front of the house all day smoking his pipe. In the end, Francina wrote out all the trek-passes and made all the kaffirs clear off the farm, except old Mosigo, who had always been a good kaffir.

In those days, Francina was very pretty. She had dark eyes with long lashes that curled down on her red cheeks when her eyes were closed. I know, because I usually sat near her in church, and during prayers I sometimes looked sideways at her. That was sinful, but then I was not the only one who did it. Whenever I opened my eyes slightly to look at her, I saw that there were other men doing the same thing. Once a young minister, who had just finished his studies at Potchefstroom, came to preach to us, so that we could appoint him as our predikant if we wished. But we did not appoint him. The ouderlings and diakens in the church council said that perhaps they could permit a minister to look underneath his lids while he was praying, but it was only right that his eyes should be shut all the time when he pronounced the blessing.

For the next two years I don’t know how Francina and her father managed to make a living on the farm. But they did it some­how. Also, after a while they got other kaffir families to squat on the farm, and to help Mosigo on the lands with the ploughing time. Once Flip left his place on the front stoep and got into the mule-cart and drove to Zeerust. After two days, the hotel pro­prietor sent him back to the farm on an Indian trader’s wagon. Flip had sold the mules and cart and bought drink.

Shortly after that I saw Flip at the post office. The dining room of Hans Welman’s house was the post office, and we all went there to talk and fetch our letters. Flip came in and shook hands with everybody in the way we all did, and said good morning. Then he went up to Hans Welman and held out his hand. Welman just looked Flip Malherbe up and down and walked away. But with all his nonsense, Flip was sane enough to know that he had been insulted.

“You go to hell, Hans Welman,” he shouted.

Welman turned round at once.

“My house is the public post office,” he said, “so I can’t throw you out. But I can say what I think of you. You treat your daughter like a kaffir. You’re a low, drunken mongrel.”

We could see that Flip Malherbe was afraid, but he could do nothing else after what the other man had said to him. So he went up to Welman and hit him on the chest. Welman just laughed and grabbed Flip quickly by the collar. Then he ran with him to the door, spun him round and kicked him under the jacket.

“Filth,” he said, when Flip fell in the dust.

We all felt that Hans Welman had no business to do that. After all, it was Flip’s own affair as to how he treated his daughter.

After that we rarely saw Flip again. He hardly ever moved from his front stoep. At first young men still came to call on Fran­cina. But later on they stopped coming, for she gave them no encouragement. She said she could not marry while her father was still alive as she had to look after him. That was usually enough for most young men. They had only to glance once at Flip, who of late had grown fat and hearty-looking, to be satisfied that it would still be many years before they could hope to get Francina. Accordingly, the young men stayed away.

By and by nobody went to the Malherbes’ house. It was no use calling on Flip, because we all knew he was mad. Although, often, when I thought of it, it seemed to me that he was less insane than what people believed. After all, it is not every man who can so arrange his affairs that he has nothing more to do except to sit down all day smoking and drinking coffee.

But although Francina never visited anybody, yet she always went regularly to church. Only, as the years passed, she became faded and no more young men looked at her during prayers. There were other and younger girls whom they would look at now. She had become thinner and there were wrinkles under her eyes. Also, her cheeks were no longer red. And there are always enough fresh-looking girls in the Bushveld, without the young men having to trouble themselves overmuch about those who have grown old.

And so the years passed, as you read in the Book, summer and winter and seed-time and harvest.

Then one day Flip Malherbe died. The only people at the funeral were the Bekkers, the Van Vuurens, my family and Hen­drik Oberholzer, the ouderling who conducted the service. We saw Francina scatter dust over her father’s face and then we left.

That was the time when we began to wonder what Francina would do. It was fifteen years since her mother had died, so that Francina was now thirty, and during those fifteen years she had worked hard and in a careful way, so that the farm Maroelasdal was all paid and there were plenty of sheep and cattle, and every year they sowed many sacks of mealies. But Francina just went on exactly the same as she had done when her father was still alive. Only, now the best years of a woman’s life were behind her, and during all that time she had had nothing but work. We all felt sorry for her, the womenfolk as well, but there was nothing we could do.

Francina came to church every Sunday, and that was about the only time that we saw her. Yet both before and after church she was always alone, and she seldom spoke to anybody. In her black mourning dress she began to look almost pretty again, but of what use was that at her age?

People who had trekked into the Marico District in the last four years and only knew her by sight said she must also be a little strange in the head, like her father was. They said it looked as though it was in the family. But we who saw her grow up knew better. We understood that it was her life that had made her lonely like that. On account of having to look after her father she had missed much.

One day an insurance agent came through the Bushveld. He called at all the houses, Francina’s also. It did not seem as if he was doing much business in the district, and yet every time he came back. And people noticed that it was always to Francina’s house that the insurance agent went first. They talked about it. The old people shook their heads in the way that old people do when, although they don’t know for sure about a thing, yet all the same they would like to believe it is so.

But if Francina knew what was being said about her she never mentioned it to anybody, and she didn’t try to act differently. Nevertheless, there came a Sunday when she missed going to church. At once everybody felt that what was being whispered about her was true. Especially when she did not come to church the next Sunday or the Sunday after. Of course, stories that are told in this way about women are always true. But there was one thing that they said that was a lie. They said that what the insurance agent wanted was Francina’s farm and cattle. And they foretold that exactly the same thing would happen to Francina as had happened to Grieta Steyn: that in the end she would lose both her property and the man.

As I have told you, this last part of their stories did not come out in the way they had prophesied. If the insurance agent really had tried to get from her the farm and the cattle, nobody could say for sure. But what we did know was that he had gone back without them. He left quite suddenly, too, and he did not return anymore.

And Francina never again came to church. Yes, it’s funny that women should get like that. For I did not imagine that anything could ever come across Francina’s life that would make her go away from her religion. But, of course, you can’t tell.

Sometimes when I ride past Maroelasdal in the evening, on my way home, I wonder about these things. When I pass that point near the aardvark mound, where the trees have been chopped down, and I see Francina in front of the house, I seem to remember her again as she was when she was fifteen. And if the sun is near to setting, and I see her playing with her child, I sometimes wish, somehow, that it was not a bastard.