table at the back of the church. Perhaps it was because the deacon was a fat, red-faced man, and not used to tiptoeing.
At verse 124 the organist signalled again, and the same three members of the church council filed out to the konsistorie, the deacon walking in front this time.
It was about then that the pastor of the Full Gospel Apostolic Faith Church, about whom Dominee Welthagen had in the past used almost as strong language as about the Pope, came up to the front gate of the church to see what was afoot. He lived near our church and, having heard the same hymn tune being played over and over for about eight hours, he was a very amazed man. Then he saw the door of the konsistorie open, and two elders and a deacon coming out, walking on tiptoe – they having apparently forgotten that they were not in church, then. When the pastor saw one of the elders hiding a black bottle under his manel, a look of understanding came over his features. The pastor walked off, shaking his head.
At verse 152 the organist signalled again. This time Elder Landsman and the other elder went out alone. The deacon stayed behind on the deacon’s bench, apparently in deep thought. The organist signalled again, for the last time, at verse 169. So you can imagine how many visits the two elders made to the konsistorie altogether.
The last verse came, and the last line of the last verse. This time it had to be “Amen.” Nothing could stop it. I would rather not describe the state that the congregation was in. And by then the three native convicts, red stripes and all, were, in the Bakhatla tongue, threatening mutiny. “Aa-m-e-e-n” came from what sounded like less than a score of voices, hoarse with singing.
The organ music ceased.
Maybe it was the sudden silence that at last brought Dominee Welthagen out of his long trance. He raised his head and looked slowly about him. His gaze travelled over his congregation and then, looking at the windows, he saw that it was night. We understood right away what was going on in Dominee Welthagen’s mind. He thought he had just come into the pulpit, and that this was the beginning of the evening service. We realised that, during all the time we had been singing, the predikant had been in a state of unconsciousness.
Once again Dominee Welthagen took a firm grip of the pulpit rail. His head again started drooping forward onto his breast. But before he went into a trance for the second time, he gave out the hymn for the evening service. “We will,” Dominee Welthagen announced, “sing Psalm 119.”
Psycho-analysis
“Koos Nienaber got a letter from his daughter, Minnie, last week,” Jurie Steyn announced to several of us sitting in his voorkamer that served as the Drogevlei post office. “It’s two years now that she has been working in an office in Johannesburg. You wouldn’t think it. Two years …”
“What was in the letter?” At Naudé asked, coming to the point.
“Well,” Jurie Steyn began, “Minnie says that …”
Jurie Steyn was quick to sense our amusement.
“If that’s how you carry on,” he announced, “I won’t tell you anything. I know what you are all thinking, laughing in that silly way. Well, just let one of you try and be postmaster, like me, in between milking and ploughing and getting the wrong statements from the creamery and the pigs rooting up the sweet-potatoes – not to talk about the calving season, even – and then see how much time you’ll have left over for steaming open and reading other people’s letters.”
Johnny Coen, who was young and was more than a little interested in Minnie Nienaber, hastened to set Jurie Steyn’s mind at rest.
“You know, we make the same sort of joke about every postmaster in the Bushveld,” Johnny Coen said. “We don’t mean anything by it. It’s a very old joke. Now, if we were living in Johannesburg, like Minnie Nienaber, we might perhaps be able to think out some newer sort of things to say –”
“What we would say,” At Naudé interrupted – At Naudé always being up-to-date, since he has a wireless and reads a newspaper every week – “What we would say is that you sublet your post office as a hideout for the Jeppe gang.”
Naturally, we did not know what the Jeppe gang was. At Naudé took quite a long time to explain. When he had finished, Oupa Bekker, who is the oldest inhabitant of the Marico Bushveld, said that there seemed to him to be something spirited about the Jeppe gang, which reminded him a lot of his own youth in the Pilanesberg area of the Waterberg District. Oupa Bekker said that he had several times, lately, thought of visiting his youngest grand-daughter in Johannesburg. Maybe they could teach him a few things in Johannesburg, he said. And maybe, also, he could teach them a thing or two.
But all this talk was getting us away from Minnie Nienaber’s letter. And once again it was Johnny Coen that brought the subject round to Jurie Steyn’s first remark.
“It must be that Koos Nienaber told you what was in his daughter’s letter,” Johnny Coen said. “Koos Nienaber must have come round here and told you. Otherwise you would never have known, I mean. You couldn’t possibly have known.”
That was what had happened, Jurie Steyn acknowledged. He went on to say that he was grateful to Johnny Coen for not harbouring those unworthy suspicions against him that were sometimes entertained by people living in the Groot Marico who did not have Johnny Coen’s advantages of education and worldly experience. We knew that he just said that to flatter Johnny Coen, who had once been a railway shunter at Ottoshoop.
Thereupon Jurie Steyn acquainted us in detail with the contents of Minnie Nienaber’s letter, as retailed to him by her father, Koos Nie-naber.
“Koos said that Minnie has been,” Jurie Steyn said, “has been – well, just a minute – oh, yes, here it is – I got old Koos Nienaber to write it down for me – she’s been psycho – psycho-analysed. Here it is, written down and all – ‘sielsontleding’.”
I won’t deny that we were all much impressed. It was something that we had never heard of before. Jurie Steyn saw the effect his statement had made on us.
“Yes,” he repeated, sure of himself – and more sure of the word, too, now –”yes, in the gold-mining city of Johannesburg, Minnie Nienaber got psycho-analysed.”
After a few moments of silence, Gysbert van Tonder made himself heard. Gysbert often spoke out of his turn, that way.
“Well, it’s not the first time a thing like that happened to a girl living in Johannesburg on her own,” Gysbert said. “One thing, the door of her parents’ home will always remain open for her. But I am surprised at old Koos Nienaber mentioning it to you. He’s usually so proud.”
I noticed that Johnny Coen looked crestfallen for a moment, until Jurie Steyn made haste to explain that it didn’t mean that at all.
According to what Koos Nienaber told him – Jurie Steyn said – it had become fashionable in Johannesburg for people to go and be attended to by a new sort of doctor, who didn’t worry about how sick your body was, but saw to it that he got your mind right. This kind of doctor could straighten out anything that was wrong with your mind, Jurie Steyn explained. And you didn’t have to be sick, even, to go along and get yourself treated by a doctor like that. It was a very fashionable thing to do, Jurie Steyn added.
Johnny Coen looked relieved.
“According to what Koos Nienaber told me,” Jurie Steyn said, “this new kind of doctor doesn’t test your heart anymore, by listening through that rubber
