lay silent for a while, looking up at the stars and thinking.
“I remember one night when I stood on Annie Steyn’s stoep and spoke to her about the stars,” Jan Ockerse said, later. “I was going to trek with the cattle to the Limpopo because of the drought. I told Annie that I would be away until the rains came, and I told her that every night, when I was gone, she had to look at a certain star and think of me. I showed her which star. Those three stars there, that are close together in a straight line. She had to remember me by the middle one, I said. But Annie explained that Willem Mostert, who had trekked to the Limpopo about a week before, had already picked that middle star for her to remember him by. So I said, all right, the top star would do. But Annie said that one already belonged to Stoffel Brink. In the end I agreed that she could remember me by the bottom star, and Annie was still saying that she would look at the lower one of those three stars every night and think of me, when her father, who seemed to have been listening behind the door, came on to the stoep and said: ‘What about cloudy nights?’ in what he supposed was a clever sort of way.”
“What happened then?” I asked Jan Ockerse.
“Annie was very annoyed,” he replied, “she told her father that he was always spoiling things. She told him that he wasn’t a bit funny, really, especially as I was the third young man to whom he had said the same thing. She said that no matter how foolish a young man might be, her father had no right to make jokes like that in front of him. It was good to hear the way that Annie stood up for me. Anyway, what followed was a long story. I came across Willem Mostert and Stoffel Brink by the Limpopo. And we remained together there for several months. And it must have been an unusual sight for a stranger to see three young men sitting round the camp-fire, every night, looking up at the stars. We got friendly, after a while, and when the rains came the three of us trekked back to the Marico. And I found, then, that Annie’s father had been right. About the cloudy nights, I mean. For I understood that it was on just such a sort of night that Annie had run off to Johannesburg with a bywoner who was going to look for work on the mines.”
Jan Ockerse sighed and returned to his thinking.
But with all the time that we had spent in talking and sleeping, most of the night had slipped away. We kept only one fire going now, and Jan Ockerse and I took turns in putting on the wood. It gets very cold just before dawn, and we were both shivering.
“Anyway,” Jan Ockerse said after a while, “now you know why I am interested in stars. I was a young man when this happened. And I have told very few people about it. About seventeen people, I should say. The others wouldn’t listen. But always, on a clear night, when I see those three bright stars in a row, I look for a long time at that lowest star, and there seems to be something very friendly about the way it shines. It seems to be my star, and its light is different from the light of the other stars… and you know, Schalk, Annie Steyn had such red lips. And such long, soft hair, Schalk. And there was that smile of hers.”
Afterwards the stars grew pale and we started rounding up the donkeys and got ready to go. And I wondered what Annie Steyn would have thought of it, if she had known that during all those years there was this man, looking up at the stars on nights when the sky was clear, and dreaming about her lips and her hair and her smile. But as soon as I reflected about it, I knew what the answer was, also. Of course, Annie Steyn would think nothing of Jan Ockerse. Nothing at all.
And, no doubt, Annie Steyn was right.
But it was strange to think that we had passed a whole night in talking about the stars. And I did not know, until then, that it was all on account of a love story of long ago.
We climbed on to the cart and set off to look for the way home.
“I know that school-teacher in the Zeerust bar was all wrong,” Jan Ockerse said, finally, “when he tried to explain how far away the stars are. The lower one of those three stars – ah, it has just faded – is very near to me. Yes, it is very near.”
SPLENDOURS FROM RAMOUTSA
NO – OOM SCHALK LOURENS SAID – no, I don’t know why it is that people always ask me to tell them stories. Even though they all know that I can tell better stories than anybody else. Much better. What I mean is, I wonder why people listen to stories. Of course, it is easy to understand why a man should ask me to tell him a story when there is drought in the Marico. Because then he can sit on the stoep and smoke his pipe and drink coffee, while I am talking, so that my story keeps him from having to go to the borehole, in the hot sun, to pump water for his cattle.
By the earnest manner in which the farmers of the Marico ask me for stories at certain periods, I am always able to tell that there is no breeze to drive the windmill, and the pump-handle is heavy, and the water is very far down. And at such times I have often observed the look of sorrow that comes into a man’s eyes, when he knows that I am near the end of my story and that he will shortly have to reach for his hat.
And when I have finished the story he says, “Yes, Oom Schalk. That is the way of the world. Yes, that story is very deep.”
But I know that all the time he is really thinking of how deep the water is in the borehole.
As I have said, it is when people have other reasons for asking me to tell them a story that I start wondering as I do now. When they ask me at those times when there is no ploughing to be done and there are no barbed-wire fences to be put up in the heat of the day. And I think that these reasons are deeper than any stories and deeper than the water in the boreholes when there is drought.
There was young Krisjan Geel, for instance. He once listened to a story. It was foolish of him to have listened, of course, especially as I hadn’t told it to him. He had heard it from the Indian behind the counter of the shop in Ramoutsa. Krisjan Geel related this story to me, and I told him straight out that I didn’t think much of it. I said anybody could guess, right from the start, why the princess was sitting beside the well. Anybody could see that she hadn’t come there just because she was thirsty. I also said that the story was too long, and that even if I was thinking of something else I would still have told it in such a way that people would have wanted to hear it to the end. I pointed out lots of other details like that.
Krisjan Geel said he had no doubt that I was right, but that the man who told him the story was only an Indian, after all, and that for an Indian, perhaps, it wasn’t too bad. He also said that there were quite a number of customers in the place, and that made it more difficult for the Indian to tell the story properly, because he had to stand at such an awkward angle, all the time, weighing out things with his foot on the scale.
By his tone it sounded as though Krisjan Geel was quite sorry for the Indian.
So I spoke to him very firmly.
“The Indian in the store at Ramoutsa,” I said, “has told me much better stories than that before today. He once told me that there were no burnt mealies mixed with the coffee-beans he sold me. Another one that was almost as good was when he said – ”
“And to think that the princess went and waited by the well,” Krisjan Geel interrupted me, “just because once she had seen the young man there.”
“ – Another good one,” I insisted, “was when he said that there was no Kalahari sand in the sack of yellow sugar I bought from him.”
“And she had only seen him once,” Krisjan Geel went on, “and she was a princess.”
“ – And I had to give most of that sugar to the pigs,” I said, “it didn’t melt or sweeten the coffee. It just
