of my mules took sick. But I saw Truida Ziemers on the stage, once. And even now, as I am talking about her again, I can remember how pretty she was. And to think that she went and married a coloured man when all the time she knew. And it wasn’t as though he could tell her that it was just sunburn, seeing that she could read it for herself on the posters. If the schoolmaster could read it, so could Truida.”
Anyway, that was only to be expected, Gysbert van Tonder said. That Jacques le Français would murder Truida Ziemers in the end, he meant. After all, what else could you expect from a marriage like that? Maybe from that point of view the play could be taken as a warning to every respectable white girl in the country.
“But that isn’t the point of the play,” young Vermaak insisted, once more. “Actually it is a good play. And it is a play with real educational value. But not that kind of educational value. If I tell you that this play is a translation – and a pretty poor translation too: I wouldn’t be surprised if Jacques le Français translated it himself – of the work of the great –”
This time the interruption came from Johnny Coen.
“It’s all very well talking like they have been doing about a girl going wrong,” Johnny Coen said. “But a great deal depends on circumstances. That is something I have learnt, now. Take the case now of a girl that …”
We all sat up to listen, then. And Gysbert van Tonder nudged Chris Welman in the ribs for coughing. We did not wish to miss a word.
“A girl that …?” At Naudé repeated in a tone of deep understanding, to encourage Johnny Coen to continue.
“Well, take a girl like that girl Baba Haasbroek in the play Ander Man se Kind,” Johnny Coen said. Jurie Steyn groaned. We didn’t want to hear all that over again.
“Well, anyway, if that girl did go wrong,” Johnny Coen proceeded – pretty diffidently, now, as though he could sense our feelings of being balked – “then there might be reasons for it. Reasons that didn’t come out in the play, maybe. And reasons that we sitting here in Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer would perhaps not have the right to judge about, either.”
Gysbert van Tonder started clearing his throat as though for another short laugh. But he seemed to change his mind halfway through.
“And in this last play, now,” Johnny Coen added, “if Jacques le Français had really loved the girl, he wouldn’t have been so jealous.”
“Yes, it’s a pity that Truida Ziemers got murdered in the end, like that,” At Naudé remarked. “Her friends in the play should have seen what Jacques le Français was up to, and have put the police onto him, in time.”
He said that with a wink, to draw young Vermaak, of course.
Thereupon the schoolmaster explained with much seriousness that such an ending would defeat the whole purpose of the drama. But by that time we had lost all interest in the subject. And when the Government lorry came soon afterwards and blew a lot of dust in at the door we made haste to collect our letters and milk-cans.
Consequently, nobody took much notice of what young Vermaak went on to tell us about the man who wrote the play. Not the man who translated it into Afrikaans but the man who wrote it in the first place. He was a writer who used to hold horses’ heads in front of a theatre, the schoolmaster said, and when he died he left his second-best bed to his wife, or something.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
