Mafeking Road (12 page)

“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 was 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.

Then, when we were ready to go, Adriaan Naudé took out his pipe; before filling it he stooped down as though to knock the ash out of it, as I had invited him to do before we fell asleep. But it so happened that Adriaan Naudé did not ever knock his pipe out against that stone.

“That's funny,” I heard Adriaan say as he bent forward.

I saw what he was about, so I knelt down and helped him. When we had cleared away the accumulation of yellow grass and dead leaves at the foot of the stone we found that the inscription on it, though battered, was quite legible. It was very simply worded. Just a date chiselled on to the stone. And below the date a name: Francina Malherbe.

That was a terrible thing that happened with Krisjan Lemmer, Oom Schalk Lourens said. It was pretty bad for me, of course, but it was much worse for Krisjan.

I remember well when it happened, for that was the time when the first gramophone came into the Marico Bushveld. Krisjan bought the machine off a Jew trader from Pretoria. It's funny when you come to think of it. When there is anything that we Boers don't want you can be quite sure that the Jew traders will bring it to us, and that we'll buy it, too.

I remember how I laughed when a Jew came to my house once with a hollow piece of glass that had a lot of silver stuff in it. The Jew told me that the silver in the glass moved up and down to show you if it was hot or cold. Of course, I said that was all nonsense. I know when it is cold enough for me to put on my woollen shirt and jacket, without having first to go and look at that piece
of glass. And I also know when it is too hot to work – which it is almost all the year round in this part of the Marico Bushveld. In the end I bought the thing. But it has never been the same since little Annie stirred her coffee with it.

Anyway, if the Jew traders could bring us the miltsiek, we would buy that off them as well, and pay them so much down, and the rest when all our cattle are dead.

Therefore, when a trader brought Krisjan Lemmer a secondhand gramophone, Krisjan sold some sheep and bought the thing. For many miles round the people came to hear the machine talk. Krisjan was very proud of his gramophone, and when he turned the handle and put in the little sharp pins, it was just like a child that has found something new to play with. The people who came to hear the gramophone said it was very wonderful what things man would think of making when once the devil had taken a hold on him properly. They said that, if nothing else, the devil has got good brains. I also thought it was wonderful, not that the gramophone could talk, but that people wanted to listen to it doing something that a child of seven could do as well. Most of the songs the gramophone played were in English. But there was one song in Afrikaans. It was “O Brandewyn laat my staan.” Krisjan played that often; the man on the round plate sang it rather well. Only the way he pronounced the words made it seem as though he was a German trying to make “O Brandewyn laat my staan” sound English. It was just like the rooineks, I thought.
First they took our country and governed it for us in a better way than we could do ourselves; now they wanted to make improvements in our language for us.

But if people spoke much about Krisjan Lemmer's gramophone, they spoke a great deal more about the unhappy way in which he and his wife lived together. Krisjan Lemmer was then about thirty-five. He was a big, strongly-built man, and when he moved about you could see the muscles of his shoulders stand out under his shirt. He was also a surprisingly good-natured man who seldom became annoyed about anything. Even with the big drought, when he had to pump water for his cattle all day and the pump broke, so that he could get no water for his cattle, he just walked into the house and lit his pipe and said that it was the Lord's will. He said that perhaps it was as well that the pump broke, because, if the Lord wanted the cattle to get water, He wouldn't have sent the drought. That was the kind of man Krisjan Lemmer was. And he would never have set hand to the pump again, either, was it not that the next day rain fell, whereby Krisjan knew that the Lord meant him to understand that the drought was over. Yet, when anything angered him he was bad.

But the unfortunate part of Krisjan Lemmer was that he could not get on with his wife Susannah. Always they quarrelled. Susannah, as we knew, was a good deal younger than her husband, but often she didn't look so very much younger. She was small and fair. Her skin had not been much darkened by the Bushveld sun, for she always wore a very wide kappie, the folds of which she
pinned down over the upper part of her face whenever she went out of the house. Her hair was the colour of the beard you see on the yellow mealies just after they have ripened. She had very quiet ways. In company she hardly ever talked, unless it was to say that the Indian shopkeeper in Ramoutsa put roasted kremetart roots with the coffee he sold us, or that the spokes of the mule-cart came loose if you didn't pour water over them.

You see, what she said were things that everybody knew and that no one argued about. Even the Indian storekeeper didn't argue about the kremetart roots. He knew that was the best part of his coffee. And yet, although she was so quiet and unassuming, Susannah was always quarrelling with her husband. This, of course, was foolish of her, especially as Krisjan was a man with gentle ways until somebody purposely annoyed him. Then he was not quite so gentle. For instance, there was the time when the chief of the Mtosa kaffirs passed him in the veld and said “Good morning” without taking the leopard skin off his head and calling Krisjan baas. Krisjan was fined ten pounds by the magistrate and had to pay for the doctor during the three months that the Mtosa chief walked with a stick.