Theron’s house.
Afterwards, Rossouw was the most disappointed man I ever saw. For he was only kept in the witness-box for about five minutes, and they wouldn’t listen to any of his theories.
On the other hand, a kaffir, who saw Tjaart van Rensburg arguing with the deceased in front of the borehole, gave evidence for over three hours. And another kaffir, who heard a shot and thought he saw Tjaart van Rensburg running down the road with a gun, was in the witness-box for the best part of a day.
“What do you think of this for a piece of nonsense?” Rossouw asked of a group standing about the courthouse. “I am a white man. I have borne arms for the Transvaal in three kaffir wars. And I am only in the witness-box for five minutes, when they tell me to step down and move my ox-wagon away from the door. And yet a raw kaffir, who can’t even sign his name, but has got to put a cross at the foot of the things he has said – this raw kaffir is allowed to stand there wasting the time of the court for ten hours on end.
“What’s more,” Rossouw went on, “Tjaart van Rensburg’s lawyer never once cross-questioned me or called me a liar. Whereas he spent half a day in calling that kaffir names. Doesn’t that lawyer think that my evidence is of any value to the court?”
Rossouw said a lot more things like that. Some of the burghers laughed at his remarks, but others took him seriously, and agreed with him, and said it was a shame that such things should be allowed, and that it all proved that the president did not have the interests of the nation at heart.
You can see, from this, that it must have been a difficult task to govern the Transvaal in those days.
The case lasted almost a week, what with all the witnesses, and the long speeches made by the prosecution and the defence. Also, the landdrost said a great many learned things about the Roman-Dutch law. During all this time Francina sat in court with that same unearthly look in her eyes. They say that she never once wept. Even when the doctor, a Hollander, explained how he cut open Andries Theron’s body, and found that the bullet had gone through his heart, the expression on Francina’s face did not change.
People who knew her grew anxious about her state. They said it was impossible for her to continue in this way, with that stony grief inside her. They said that if she did not break down and weep she could not go on living much longer.
Anyway, Francina was not called as a witness. Perhaps they felt that there was nothing of importance that she could say.
So the days passed.
And Rossouw was still complaining about the unfair way he had been treated in the witness-box, when Tjaart van Rensburg, his hat tilted over the eye and his wrists close together in front of him, strode into the courthouse for the last time.
The landdrost looked less important on that morning. And the jurymen did not seem very happy. But they were not the kind of men to shirk a duty they had sworn to carry out.
Tjaart van Rensburg was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was passed on him.
“Yes, I am guilty,” he answered. “I shot Andries Theron.”
His voice was steady, and as he spoke he twirled the brim of his hat slowly round and round between his fingers.
And that was how it came about that, early one winter’s morning, a number of kaffirs were swinging their picks into the hard gravel, digging a hole by the side of the courthouse.
A small group had gathered at the graveside. Some were kneeling in prayer. Among the spectators was Francina Theron, looking very frail and slender in her widow’s weeds. When the grave was deep enough a roughly constructed coffin was lifted out of a cart that bore, painted on its side, the arms of the republic.
The grave was filled in. The newly made mound of gravel and red earth was patted smooth with the shovels.
Then, for the first time since her husband’s death, Francina wept.
She flung herself at full-length on the mound, and trailed her fingers through the pebbles and fresh earth. And calling out tender and passionate endearments, Francina sobbed noisily on the grave of her lover.
Willem Prinsloo’s Peach Brandy
No (Oom Schalk Lourens said) you don’t get flowers in the Groot Marico. It is not a bad district for mealies, and I once grew quite good onions in a small garden I made next to the dam. But what you can really call flowers are rare things here. Perhaps it’s the heat. Or the drought.
Yet whenever I talk about flowers, I think of Willem Prinsloo’s farm on Abjaterskop, where the dance was, and I think of Fritz Pretorius, sitting pale and sick by the roadside, and I think of the white rose that I wore in my hat, jauntily. But most of all I think of Grieta.
If you walk over my farm to the hoogte, and look towards the north-west, you can see Abjaterskop behind the ridge of the Dwarsberge. People will tell you that there are ghosts on Abjaterskop, and that it was once the home of witches. I can believe that. I was at Abjaterskop only once. That was many years ago. And I never went there again. Still, it wasn’t the ghosts that kept me away; nor was it the witches.
Grieta Prinsloo was due to come back from the finishing school at Zeerust, where she had gone to learn English manners and dictation and other high-class subjects. Therefore Willem Prinsloo, her father, arranged a big dance on his farm at Abjaterskop to celebrate Grieta’s return.
I was invited to the party. So was Fritz Pretorius. So was every white person in the district, from Derdepoort to Ramoutsa. What was more, practically everybody went. Of course, we were all somewhat nervous about meeting Grieta. With all the superior things she had learnt at the finishing school, we wouldn’t be able to talk to her in a chatty sort of way, just as though she were an ordinary Boer girl. But what fetched us all to Abjaterskop in the end was our knowledge that Willem Prinsloo made the best peach brandy in the district.
Fritz Pretorius spoke to me of the difficulty brought about by Grieta’s learning.
“Yes, jong,” he said, “I am feeling pretty shaky about talking to her, I can tell you. I have been rubbing up my education a bit, though. Yesterday I took out my old slate that I last used when I left school seventeen years ago, and I did a few sums. I did some addition and subtraction. I tried a little multiplication, too. But I have forgotten how it is done.”
I told Fritz that I would have liked to have helped him, but I had never learnt as far as multiplication.
The day of the dance arrived. The post-cart bearing Grieta to her father’s house passed through Drogedal in the morning. In the afternoon I got dressed. I wore a black jacket, fawn trousers, and a pink shirt. I also put on the brown boots that I had bought about a year before, and that I had never had occasion to wear. For I would have looked silly walking about the farm in a pair of shop boots when everybody else wore homemade veldskoens.
I believed, as I got on my horse, and set off down the Government Road, with my hat rakishly on one side, that I would be easily the best-dressed young man at that dance.
It was getting on towards sunset when I arrived at the foot of Abjaterskop, which I had to skirt in order to reach Willem Prinsloo’s farm, nestling in a hollow behind the hills. I felt, as I rode, that it was stupid for a man to live in a part that was reputed to be haunted. The
