Jurie Steyn should give his voorkamer all the credit for it.
“If we were sitting out on the veld, under a camel-thorn tree, say,” Gysbert van Tonder said, “and we were talking sensible things, as we always do, then there would be much reason and sound judgment in whatever we had to say. You haven’t got to be in the konsistorie of the church in Zeerust in order to make a judicious remark. Indeed, Jurie, with all respect to your wife’s cousin, who is a deacon, I actually think that some of the things I have heard said that have been least thoughtful, have been said in the Zeerust konsistorie.”
Chris Welman said that, in talking that way, Gysbert van Tonder was being equally unfair. There was something about the way you felt when you were in the vestry, Chris Welman said, with the walls so clean and high and whitewashed, and with a couple of elders next to you that looked – well, if not clean, exactly, then at least high up and whitewashed. Anyway, you couldn’t be yourself, then, quite, Chris Welman said.
Yes, he ended up very lamely.
Jurie Steyn felt called on, then, to come to the defence of his wife’s cousin, Deacon Kirstein. For it wasn’t a happy picture, somehow, that Chris Welman had left us with, of the deacons and elders meeting in the Zeerust konsistorie before a church service. And with Deacon Kirstein perhaps looking more whitewashed than any of them.
“I can’t understand Chris Welman talking that way,” Jurie Steyn said, primly. “Because if Chris Welman’s name ever had to be put forward, for a deacon, I am sure that nobody would talk against him and mention a truckload of Afrikander oxen that a –”
“That a what?” Gysbert van Tonder demanded, his voice sounding almost fierce.
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” Jurie Steyn answered. “I don’t know what you are suggesting, even, Gysbert. I was just trying to say that if Chris Welman’s name, now, had to be put forward as deacon, well, there would be nothing against him, if you know what I mean. Chris Welman’s name would be held in great respect.”
Gysbert van Tonder was on the point of replying. But we realised that he pulled himself up short. Jurie Steyn had caught him, all right. For what Gysbert van Tonder might have said was that maybe there was nothing at all against Chris Welman as an honourable burgher and a regular churchgoer. But there was Chris Welman’s son, Tobie …
It was almost as though Jurie Steyn had challenged Gysbert van Tonder to mention the name of Chris Welman’s son. For then there would, indeed, have been trouble. In any case, Gysbert van Tonder sat silent for a few moments. And you could see that it was on the tip of his tongue to talk about Chris Welman’s son, Tobie. And to say that Chris Welman might be a good churchgoer, and all that. But that Chris Welman’s son, Tobie, was even more regular. Singing a lot of hymns and psalms every Sunday without fail, for almost three years, in the chapel of the reform school.
From his silence, it was clear that that was something Gysbert van Tonder dared not mention. So Gysbert van Tonder contented himself with explaining that whatever Jurie Steyn was hinting at, about the time the stationmaster refused to have those oxen trucked unless he knew who the owner was, well – Gysbert van Tonder said – a lot of people had already had occasion to complain about how officious that stationmaster was.
“What about the time our Volksraad member’s brother-in-law himself went down to the station and spoke to the stationmaster very firmly?” Gysbert van Tonder went on. “And he asked the stationmaster if he thought that every farmer in the Groot Marico was a cattle thief. He asked him that straight out, because he had brought witnesses with him. And the stationmaster said, no, but he knew that every Marico farmer was a cattle farmer, and he knew that any cattle farmer could make a mistake.”
We all said, then, that that was quite a different thing. And we said that if you weren’t there to see to it yourself, and you left it to a Bechuana herd-boy to go and have a lot of cattle railed to Johannesburg, why, mistakes were almost sure to happen, we said. Thereupon At Naudé started telling us about a mistake that one of his Bechuana herd-boys had made on a certain occasion, as a result of which six of Koos Nienaber’s best trek-oxen got railed to Johannesburg along with some scrub animals that At Naudé was sending to the market.
“That was the time Koos Nienaber went to Johannesburg to have his old Mauser mended,” At Naudé explained. “And it just happened that because he didn’t know where to get off, Koos Nienaber was shunted onto a siding, somewhere, past Johannesburg station. And what should take place but that Koos Nienaber alighted from his second-class compartment just at the same time that his six trek-oxen should be walking out of a truck on the other side of the line. That caused quite a lot of trouble, of course. And before he got his six trek-oxen back, Koos Nie-naber had to explain to a magistrate what he meant by loading all the five chambers of his Mauser on a railway platform, even though the bolt action and foresight of the Mauser were in need of repair. I believe the magistrate said that there were quite enough brawls and ugly scenes that had to do with gun-play taking place in Johannesburg every day, without a farmer having to come all the way from the Marico with a rusty Mauser to add to all that unpleasantness. Naturally, I gave my Bechuana herd-boy a good straight talking-to about it afterwards, for being so ignorant.”
At Naudé paused, as though inviting one of us to say something. But we had none of us any comment to make. For we had long ago heard Koos Nienaber’s side of the story. And from what he had told us, it would appear that all the fault did not lie with At Naudé’s herd-boy. At Naudé seemed to fit a little into the story, himself.
“Anyway,” At Naudé added – smiling in a twisted sort of way – “what Koos Nienaber was most sore about, in court, was that that Johannesburg magistrate spoke of his Mauser as a rusty old fowling-piece.”
Koos Nienaber didn’t object to the fowling-piece part of it, so much, At Naudé said. Because he wasn’t quite sure what a fowling-piece was. But it took him a long time to get over the idea of the magistrate saying that his Mauser was rusty.
There was an uncomfortable silence, once again. It was broken by young Johnny Coen. Often, in the past, when there had been some misunderstanding in Jurie Steyn’s post office, Johnny Coen had said something to smooth matters over.
“Maybe it’s like what it says in the Good Book,” Johnny Coen remarked. “Perhaps it’s to do with Mammon. Perhaps if we sought the Kingdom of Heaven more, then we wouldn’t have such thoughtless things happening. Like a farmer sending some of his own neighbour’s cattle to the market by mistake. It’s a mistake that happens with every truck-load, almost. I was working at Ottoshoop siding, and I know. It used to give the stationmaster there grey hairs. Loading a lot of cattle into a truck and then not knowing how many would have to be unloaded again before the engine came to fetch that truck. And all the time it was through some mistake, of course. A mistake on the part of an ignorant Bechuana herd-boy.”
It was then that some of us remembered the mistakes that the herdboy of Deacon Kirstein had made, long ago, along those same lines. We felt not a little pained at having to mention those mistakes, considering the high regard in which we held Deacon Kirstein, who was Jurie Steyn’s wife’s cousin. We only made mention of it because of the circumstance that that mistake on the part of the deacon’s herd-boy had gone on over a period of years, before it was detected. And maybe the mistake would never have been found out, either, if it wasn’t that, along with a truck full of Deacon Kirstein’s Large White pigs, there was also loaded a span of mules belonging to a near neighbour of Deacon Kirstein’s.
And because he was already a deacon, we all felt very sorry for Deacon Kirstein, to think that his herd-boy should be so ignorant. And we winked at each other a good deal, too, in those days, one Marico farmer winking at another. And we said that it was just too bad that Deacon Kirstein should have so uneducated a herd-boy, who couldn’t tell the
