The Sun Between Their Feet (29 page)

Now the two men were sitting in the chairs.

‘Like some tea, Mr Grant?'

‘I could do with a cup.'

Mr Rooyen shouted: ‘Tea, boy!' and a shout came back from the kitchen. The girl could hear the iron stove being banged and blown into heat. It was nearly midday and she wondered what Mr Rooyen would have for lunch. That rancid beef?

She thought: If I were Maureen I wouldn't leave him alone, I'd look after him. I suppose she's some silly woman in an office in town … But since he loved Maureen, she became her, and heard his voice saying: Maureen, Maureen, my love. Simultaneously she held her thin brown arms into the sun and felt how they were dark dry brown, she felt the flesh melting off hard lank bones.

‘I spoke to Tobacco Paynter last night on the telephone, and he said he thinks Rich Mitchell might very well be in a different frame of mind by now, he's had a couple of good seasons.'

‘If a couple of good seasons could make any difference to
Mr Mitchell,' came Mr Rooyen's hot, resentful voice. ‘But thank you, Mr Grant. Thank you.'

‘He's close,' said her father. ‘Near. Canny. Careful. Those North Country people are, you know.' He laughed. Mr Rooyen laughed, too, after a pause – he was a Dutchman, and had to work out the phrase ‘North Country'.

‘If I were you,' said Mr Grant, ‘I'd get the whole of the lands on either side of the vlei under mealies the first season. Rich has never had it under cultivation, and the soil'd go sixteen bags to the acre for the first couple of seasons.'

‘Yes, I've been thinking that's what I should do.'

She heard the sounds of the tea being brought in.

Mr Rooyen said to her through the door: ‘Like a cup?' but she shook her head. She was thinking that if she were Maureen she'd fix up the house for him. Her father's next remark was therefore no surprise to her.

‘Thought of getting married, Rooyen?'

He said bitterly: ‘Take a look at this house, Mr Grant.'

‘Well, you could build on a couple of rooms for about thirty, I reckon, I'll lend you my building boy. And a wife'd get it all spick-and-span in no time.'

Soon the two men came out, and Mr Rooyen stood on the veranda as she and her father got into the car and drove off. She waved to him, politely, with a polite smile.

She waited for her father to say something, but although he gave her several doubtful looks, he did not. She said: ‘Mr Rooyen's in love with a girl called Maureen.'

‘Did he say so?'

‘Yes, he did.'

‘Well,' he said, talking to her, as was his habit, one grown person to another, ‘I'd say it was time he got married.'

‘Yes.'

‘Everything all right?' he enquired, having worked out exactly the right words to use.

‘Yes, thank you.'

‘Good.'

That season Rich Mitchell leased a couple of miles of his big vlei to Mr Rooyen, with a promise of sale later. Tobacco Paynter's wife got a governess from England, called Miss Betty Blunt, and almost at once Mr Rooyen and she were engaged. Mrs Paynter complained that she could never keep a governess longer than a couple of months, they always got married, but she couldn't have been too angry about it, because she laid on a big wedding for them, and all the district was there. The girl was asked if she would be a bridesmaid, but she very politely refused. On the track to the station there was a new signpost pointing along a well-used road which said: ‘The Big Vlei Farm. C. Rooyen.'

… Ja, but that isn't why I'm writing this time. You asked about Dick. You're worrying about him? – man! but he's got a poetry Scholarship from a Texas University and he's lecturing the Texans about letters and life too in Suid Afrika, South Africa to you (forgive the hostility) and his poems are read, so they tell me, wherever the English read poetry. He's fine, man, but I thought I'd tell you about Johannes Potgieter, remember him? Remember the young poet, The Young Poet? He was around that winter you were here, don't tell me you've forgotten those big melting brown eyes and those dimples. About ten years ago (ja, time flies,) he got a type of unofficial grace-gift of a job at St – University on the strength of those poems of his, and God they were good. Not that you or any other English-speaking domkop will ever know, because they don't translate out of Afrikaans. Remember me telling you and everyone else (give me credit for that, at least, I give the devil his due, when he's a poet) what a poet he was, how blerry good he was – but several people tried to translate Hans's poems, including me, and failed. Right.
Goed.
Meanwhile, a third of the world's population or is it a fifth, or to put it another way. X5Y59 million people speak English (and it's increasing by six births a minute) but one million people speak Afrikaans, and though I say it in a whisper, man, only a fraction of them can read it, I mean to read it. But Hans is still a great poet. Right.

He wasn't all that happy about being a sort of unofficial Laureate at that University, it's no secret some poets don't make Laureates. At the end of seven months he produced a book of poems which had the whole God-fearing place
sweating and sniffing out heresy of all kinds, sin, sex, liberalism, brother-love, etc., and so on; but, of course, in a civilized country (I say this under my breath, or I'll get the sack from my University, and I've got four daughters these days, had you forgotten?) no one would see anything in them but good poetry. Which is how Hans saw them, poor innocent soul, he was surprised at what people saw in them, and he was all upset. He didn't like being called all those names, and the good country boys from their fine farms and the smart town boys from their big houses all started looking sideways and making remarks, and our Hans, he was reduced to pap, because he's not a fighter, Hans, he was never a taker of positions on the side of justice, freedom and the rest, for to tell you the truth, I don't think he ever got round to defining them.
Goed.
He resigned, in what might be called a dignified silence, but his friends knew it was just plain cowardice or if you like incomprehension about what the fuss was over, and he went to live in Blagspruit in the Orange Free, where his Tantie Gertrude had a house. He helped her in her store. Ja, that's what he did. What did we all say to this? Well, what do you think? The inner soul of the artist (etcetera) knows what is best, and he probably
needed
the Orange Free and his Auntie's store for his development. Well, something like that. To tell the truth, we didn't say much, he simply dropped out. And time passed. Ja. Then they made me editor of
Onwards,
and thinking about our indigenous poets I remembered Johannes Potgieter, and wrote What about a poem from you? – feeling bad because when I counted up the years it was eight since I'd even thought of him, even counting those times when one says drunk at dawn: Remember Hans? Now, there was a poet …

No reply, so I let an editorial interval elapse and wrote again, and I got a very correct letter back. Well phrased. Polite. But not just that, it took me an hour to work out the handwriting – it was in a sort of Gothic print, each letter a work of art, like a medieval manuscript. But all he said, in
that beautiful black art-writing was: he was very well, he hoped I was very well, the weather was good, except the rains were late, his Tantie Gertie was dead, and he was running the store. ‘Jou vriend, Johannes Potgieter.'

Right.
Goed.
I was taking a trip to Joburg so I wrote and said I'd drop in at Blagspruit on my way back and I got another Manu Script, or Missal, saying he hoped to see me, and he would prepare Esther for my coming. I thought, he's married, poor
kerel,
and it was the first time I'd thought of him as anything but a born bachelor, and I was right -because when I'd done with Joburg, not a moment too soon, and driven down to the Orange Free, and arrived on the doorstep, there was Hans, but not a sign of a wife and Esther turned out to be – but first I take pleasure in telling you that the beautiful brown-eyed poet with his noble brow and pale dimpled skin was bald, he has a tonsure, I swear it; and he's fat, sort of smooth pale fat. He's like a monk, lard-coloured and fat and smooth. Esther is the cook, or rather, his jailer. She's a Zulu, a great fat woman and I swear she put the fear of God into me before I even got into the house. Tantie Gertie's house is a square brick four-roomed shack, you know the kind, with an iron roof and verandas – well, what you'd expect in Blagspruit. And Esther stood about six feet high in a white apron and a white doekie and she held a lamp up in one great black fist and looked into my face and sighed and went off into her kitchen singing Rock of Ages. Ja, I promise you. And I looked at Hans, and all he said was: ‘It's okay, man, she likes you, come in.'

She gave us a great supper of roast mutton and pumpkin fritters and samp, and then some preserved fruit. She stood over us, arms folded, as we ate, and when Johannes left some mutton fat, she said in her mellow hymn-singing voice: ‘Waste not, want not, Master Johannes.' And he ate it all up. Ja. She told me I should have some more peaches for my health, but I defied her and I felt as guilty as a small kicker, and I could see Hans eyeing me down the table and
wondering where I got the nerve. She lives in the
kia
at the back, one small room with four children by various fathers, but no man, because God is more than enough for her now, you can see, with all those kids and Hans to bring up the right way. Auntie's store is a Drapery and General Goods in the main street, called Gertie's Store, and Hans was running it with a Coloured man. But I heard Esther with my own ears at supper saying to his bowed bald shamed head: ‘Master Johannes, I heard from the cook at the Predikant's house today that the dried peaches have got worms in them.' And Hans said: ‘Okay, Esther, I'll send them up some of the new stock tomorrow.'

Right. We spent all that evening talking and he was the same old Hans, you remember how he used to sit, saying not a blerry word, smiling that sweet dimpled smile of his, listening, listening, and then he'd ask a question, remember? Well,
do
you? Because it's only just now
I'm
beginning to remember. People'd be talking about, I don't know what, the Nats or the weather or the grape-crop, anything, and just as you'd start to get nervous because he never said anything he'd lean forward and start questioning, terribly serious, earnest, about some detail, something not quite central, if you know what I mean. He'd lean forward, smiling, smiling, and he'd say: ‘You really mean that, it rained all morning? It rained all
morning,
is that the truth?' That's right you'd say, a bit uneasy, and he'd say, shaking his head, God, man, it rained all morning, you say … And then there'd be a considerable silence till things picked up again. And half an hour later he'd say: ‘You really mean it, the hanepoort grapes are good this year?'

Right. We drank a good bit of brandewyn that night, but in a civilized way, you know: Would you like another little drop, Martin, Ja, just a small tot, Hans, thank you, but we got pretty pickled, and when I woke Sunday morning, I felt like death, but Esther was setting down a tray of tea by my bed, all dressed up in her Sunday hat and her black silk saying: ‘Goeie môre, Master du Preez, it's nearly time for
church,' and I nearly said: ‘I'm not a churchgoer, Esther,' but I thought better of it, because it came to me, can it be possible, has our Hans turned a God-fearing man in Blagspruit? So I said,
‘Goed,
Esther, thanks for telling me, and now just get out of here so that I can get dressed.' Otherwise she'd have dressed me, I swear it. And she gave me a majestic nod, knowing that God had spoken through her to send me to church, sinner that I was and stinking of cheap
dop
from the night before.

Right. Johannes and I went to Kerk, he in a black Sunday suit, if you'd believe such a thing, and saying: ‘Good morning, Mr Stein, goeie môre, Mrs Van Esslin,' a solid and respected member of the congregation and, I thought, poor
kerel,
there but for the grace of God go I, if I had to live in this god-forsaken dorp stuck in the middle of the Orange Free State. And he looked like death after the brandewyn, and so did I, and we sat there swaying and sweating in that blerry little church through a sermon an hour and a half long, while all the faithful gave us nasty curious looks. Then we had a cold lunch, Esther having been worshipping at the kaffir church down in the Location, and we slept it all off and woke covered with flies and sweating, and it was as hot as hell, which is what Blagspruit is, hell. And he'd been there ten years, man, ten years …

Right. It is Esther's afternoon off, and Johannes says he will make us some tea, but I see he is quite lost without her, so I say, give me a glass of water, and let's get out from under this iron, that's all I ask. He looks surprised, because his hide is hardened to it, but off we go, through the dusty little garden full of marigolds and zinnias, you know those sun-baked gardens with the barbed wire fences and the gates painted dried-blood colour in those dorps stuck in the middle of the veld, enough to make you get drunk even to think of them, but Johannes is sniffing at the marigolds, which stink like turps, and he sticks an orange zinnia in his lapel, and says: ‘Esther likes gardening.' And there we go along the main street, saying good afternoon to the citizens,
for a half a mile, then we're out in the veld again, just the veld. And we wander about, kicking up the dust and watching the sun sink, because both of us have just one idea, which is: how soon can we decently start sundowning?

Then there was a nasty stink on the air, and it came from a small bird impaled on a thorn on a thorn tree which was a butcher-bird's cache, have you ever seen one? Every blerry thorn had a beetle or a worm or something stuck on it, and it made me feel pretty sick, coming on top of everything, and I was just picking up a stone to throw at the damned thorn-tree, to spite the butcher-bird, when I saw Hans staring at a lower part of this tree. On a long black thorn was a great big brown beetle, and it was waving all its six legs and its two feelers in rhythm, trying to claw the thorn out of its middle, or so it looked, and it was writhing and wriggling, so that at last it fell off the thorn, which was at right angles from the soil, and it landed on its back, still waving its legs, trying to up itself. At which Hans bent down to look at it for some time, his two monk's hands on his upper thighs, his bald head sweating and glowing red in the last sunlight.
Then he bent down, picked up the beetle and stuck it back on the thorn.
Carefully, you understand, so that the thorn went back into the hole it had already made, you could see he was trying not to hurt the beetle. I just stood and gaped, like a domkop, and I remembered for some reason how one used to feel when he leaned forward and said, all earnest and involved: ‘You say the oranges are no good this year? Honestly, is that really true?' Anyway, I said: ‘Hans, man, for God's sake!' and then he looked at me, and he said, reproachfully, ‘The ants would have killed it, just look!' Well, the ground was swarming with ants of one kind or another, so there was logic in it, but I said: ‘Hans, let's drink, man, let's drink.'