was the line that the conversation suddenly took, in Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer. We were just recalling the old days, we said to each other.
And we were enjoying this talk about the past. And we could see that Jurie Steyn was enjoying it also. And then Johnny Coen tried to spoil everything. Johnny Coen, without anybody asking him, began to talk about the Sermon on the Mount. And let any of us that was without sin, Johnny Coen added, cast the first stone.
Jurie Steyn summed it all up.
“Maybe a lot of sense gets talked here in my post office,” Jurie Steyn said, “but a lot of –––, also.”
Jurie Steyn said that word softly, because he didn’t want his wife to hear.
Birth Certificate
It was when At Naudé told us what he had read in the newspaper about a man who had thought all his life that he was white, and had then discovered that he was coloured, that the story of Flippus Biljon was called to mind. I mean, we all knew the story of Flippus Biljon. But because it was still early afternoon we did not immediately make mention of Flippus. Instead, we discussed, at considerable length, other instances that were within our knowledge of people who had grown up as one sort of person and had discovered in later life that they were in actual fact quite a different sort of person.
Many of these stories that we recalled in Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer as the shadows of the thorn-trees lengthened were based only on hearsay. It was the kind of story that you had heard, as a child, at your grandmother’s knee. But your grandmother would never admit, of course, that she had heard that story at her grandmother’s knee. Oh, no. She could remember very clearly how it all happened, just like it was yesterday. And she could tell you the name of the farm. And the name of the landdrost who was summoned to take note of the extraordinary occurrence, when it had to do with a more unusual sort of changeling, that is. And she would recall the solemn manner in which the landdrost took off his hat when he said that there were many things that were beyond human understanding.
Similarly now, in the voorkamer, when we recalled stories of white children that had been carried off by a Bushman or a baboon or a werewolf, even, and had been brought up in the wilds and without any proper religious instruction, then we also did not think it necessary to explain where we had first heard those stories. We spoke as though we had been actually present at some stage of the affair – more usually at the last scene, where the child, now grown to manhood and needing trousers and a pair of braces and a hat, gets restored to his parents and the magistrate after studying the birth certificate says that there are things in this world that baffle the human mind.
And while the shadows under the thorn-trees grew longer, the stories we told in Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer grew, if not longer, then, at least, taller.
“But this isn’t the point of what I have been trying to explain,” At Naudé interrupted a story of Gysbert van Tonder’s that was getting a bit confused in parts, through Gysbert van Tonder not being quite clear as to what a werewolf was. “When I read that bit in the newspaper I started wondering how must a man feel, after he has grown up with adopted parents and he discovers, quite late in life, through seeing his birth certificate for the first time, that he isn’t white, after all. That is what I am trying to get at. Supposing Gysbert were to find out suddenly –”
At Naudé pulled himself up short. Maybe there were one or two things about a werewolf that Gysbert van Tonder wasn’t too sure about, and he would allow himself to be corrected by Oupa Bekker on such points. But there were certain things he wouldn’t stand for.
“All right,” At Naudé said hastily, “I don’t mean Gysbert van Tonder, specially. What I am trying to get at is, how would any one of us feel? How would any white man feel, if he has passed as white all his life, and he sees for the first time, from his birth certificate, that his grandfather was coloured? I mean, how would he feel? Think of that awful moment when he looks at the palms of his hands and he sees –”
“He can have that awful moment,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “I’ve looked at the palm of my hand. It’s a white man’s palm. And my fingernails have also got proper half-moons.”
At Naudé said he had never doubted that. No, there was no need for Gysbert van Tonder to come any closer and show him. He could see quite well enough just from where he was sitting. After Chris Welman had pulled Gysbert van Tonder back onto the rusbank by his jacket, counselling him not to do anything foolish, since At Naudé did not mean him, Oupa Bekker started talking about a white child in Schweizer-Reneke that had been stolen out of its cradle by a family of baboons.
“I haven’t seen that cradle myself,” Oupa Bekker acknowledged, modestly. “But I met many people who have. After the child had been stolen, neighbours from as far as the Orange River came to look at that cradle. And when they looked at it they admired the particular way that Heilart Nortjé – that was the child’s father – had set about making his household furniture, with glued klinkpenne in the joints, and all. But the real interest about the cradle was that it was empty, proving that the child had been stolen by baboons. I remember how one neighbour, who was not on very good terms with Heilart Nortjé, went about the district saying that it could only have been baboons.
“But it was many years before Heilart Nortjé and his wife saw their child again. By saw, I mean getting near enough to be able to talk to him and ask him how he was getting on. For he was always too quick, from the way the baboons had brought him up. At intervals Heilart Nortjé and his wife would see the tribe of baboons sitting on a rant, and their son, young Heilart, would be in the company of the baboons. And once, through his field-glasses, Heilart had been able to observe his son for quite a few moments. His son was then engaged in picking up a stone and laying hold of a scorpion that was underneath it. The speed with which his son pulled off the scorpion’s sting and proceeded to eat up the rest of the scorpion whole filled the father’s heart of Heilart Nortjé with a deep sense of pride.
“I remember how Heilart talked about it. ‘Real intelligence,’ Heilart announced with his chest stuck out. ‘A real baboon couldn’t have done it quicker or better. I called my wife, but she was a bit too late. All she could see was him looking as pleased as anything and scratching himself. And my wife and I held hands and we smiled at each other and we asked each other, where does he get it from?’
“But then there were times again when that tribe of baboons would leave the Schweizer-Reneke area and go deep into the Kalahari, and Heilart Nortjé and his wife would know nothing about what was happening to their son, except through reports from farmers near whose homesteads the baboons had passed. Those farmers had a lot to say about what happened to some of their sheep, not to talk of their mealies and watermelons. And Heilart would be very bitter about those farmers. Begrudging his son a few prickly-pears, he said.
“And it wasn’t as though he hadn’t made every effort to get his son back, Heilart said, so that he could go to catechism classes, since he was almost of age to be confirmed. He had set all sorts of traps for his son, Heilart said, and he had also thought of shooting the baboons, so that it would be easier, after that, to get his son back. But there was always the danger, firing into a pack like that, of his shooting his own son.
“The neighbour that I have spoken of before,” Oupa Bekker continued, “who was not very well-disposed towards Heilart Nortjé, said that the real reason Heilart didn’t shoot was because he didn’t always know – actually know – which was his son and which was one of the more flatheaded kees-baboons.”
It seemed that this was going to be a very long story. Several of us started getting restive … So Johnny Coen asked Oupa Bekker, in a polite sort of way, to tell us how it all ended.
“Well,
