VELD MAIDEN
I KNOW WHAT IT IS – Oom Schalk Lourens said – when you talk that way about the veld. I have known people who sit like you do and dream about the veld, and talk strange things, and start believing in what they call the soul of the veld, until in the end the veld means a different thing to them from what it does to me.
I only know that the veld can be used for growing mealies on, and it isn’t very good for that, either. Also, it means very hard work for me, growing mealies. There is the ploughing, for instance. I used to get aches in my back and shoulders from sitting on a stone all day long on the edge of the lands, watching the kaffirs and the oxen and the plough going up and down, making furrows. Hans Coetzee, who was a Boer War prisoner at St. Helena, told me how he got sick at sea from watching the ship going up and down, up and down, all the time.
And it’s the same with ploughing. The only real cure for this ploughing sickness is to sit quietly on a riempies bench on the stoep, with one’s legs raised slightly, drinking coffee until the ploughing season is over. Most of the farmers in the Marico Bushveld have adopted this remedy, as you have no doubt observed by this time.
But there the veld is. And it is not good to think too much about it. For then it can lead you in strange ways. And sometimes – sometimes when the veld has led you very far – there comes into your eyes a look that God did not put there.
It was in the early summer, shortly after the rains, that I first came across John de Swardt. He was sitting next to a tent that he had pitched behind the maroelas at the far end of my farm, where it adjoins Frans Welman’s lands. He had been there several days and I had not known about it, because I sat much on my stoep then, on account of what I have already explained to you about the ploughing.
He was a young fellow with long black hair. When I got nearer I saw what he was doing. He had a piece of white bucksail on a stand in front of him and he was painting my farm. He seemed to have picked out all the useless bits for his picture – a krantz and a few stones and some clumps of kakiebos.
“Young man,” I said to him, after we had introduced ourselves, “when people in Johannesburg see that picture they will laugh and say that Schalk Lourens lives on a barren piece of rock, like a lizard does. Why don’t you rather paint the fertile parts? Look at that vlei there, and the dam. And put in that new cattle-dip that I have just built up with reinforced concrete. Then, if Piet Grobler or General Kemp sees this picture, he will know at once that Schalk Lourens has been making improvements on the farm.”
The young painter shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I want to paint only the veld. I hate the idea of painting boreholes and cattle-dips and houses and concrete – especially concrete. I want only the veld. Its loneliness. Its mystery. When this picture is finished I’ll be proud to put my name to it.”
“Oh, well, that is different,” I replied, “as long as you don’t put my name to it. Better still,” I said, “put Frans Welman’s name to it. Write underneath that this is Frans Welman’s farm.”
I said that because I still remembered that Frans Welman had voted against me at the last election of the Drogekop School Committee.
John de Swardt then took me into his tent and showed me some other pictures he had painted at different places along the Dwarsberge. They were all the same sort of picture, barren and stony. I thought it would be a good idea if the Government put up a lot of pictures like that on the Kalahari border for the locusts to see. Because that would keep the locusts out of the Marico.
Then John de Swardt showed me another picture he had painted and when I saw that I got a different opinion about this thing that he said was Art. I looked from De Swardt to the picture and then back again to De Swardt.
“I’d never have thought it of you,” I said, “and you look such a quiet sort, too.”
“I call it the ‘Veld Maiden’,” John de Swardt said.
“If the predikant saw it he’d call it by other names,” I replied. “But I am a broad-minded man. I have been once in the bar in Zeerust and twice in the bioscope when I should have been attending Nagmaal. So I don’t hold it against a young man for having ideas like this. But you mustn’t let anybody here see this Veld Maiden unless you paint a few more clothes on her.”
“I couldn’t,” De Swardt answered, “that’s just how I see her. That’s just how I dream about her. For many years now she has come to me so in my dreams.”
“With her arms stretched out like that?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And with – ”
“Yes, yes, just like that,” De Swardt said very quickly. Then he blushed and I could see how very young he was. It seemed a pity that a nice young fellow like that should be so mad.
“Anyway, if ever you want a painting job,” I said when I left, “you can come and whitewash the back of my sheep-kraal.”
I often say funny things like that to people.
I saw a good deal of John de Swardt after that, and I grew to like him. I was satisfied – in spite of his wasting his time in painting bare stones and weeds – that there was no real evil in him. I was sure that he only talked silly things about visions and the spirit of the veld because of what they had done to him at the school in Johannesburg where they taught him all that nonsense about art, and I felt sorry for him. Afterwards I wondered for a little while if I shouldn’t rather have felt sorry for the art school. But when I had thought it all out carefully I knew that John de Swardt was only very young and innocent, and that what happened to him later on was the sort of thing that does happen to those who are simple of heart.
On several Sundays in succession I took De Swardt over the rant to the house of Frans Welman. I hadn’t a very high regard for Frans’s judgment since the time he voted for the wrong man at the School Committee. But I had no other neighbour within walking distance, and I had to go somewhere on a Sunday.
We talked of all sorts of things. Frans’s wife Sannie was young and pretty, but very shy. She wasn’t naturally like that. It was only that she was afraid to talk in case she said something of which her husband might disapprove. So most of the time Sannie sat silent in the corner, getting up now and again to make more coffee for us.
Frans Welman was in some respects what people might call a hard man. For instance, it was something of a mild scandal the way he treated his wife and the kaffirs on his farm. But then, on the other hand, he looked very well after his cattle and pigs. And I have always believed that this is more important in a farmer than that he should be kind to his wife and the kaffirs.
Well, we talked about the mealies and the drought of the year before last and the subsidies, and I could see that in a short while the conversation would come round to the Volksraad, and as I wasn’t anxious to hear how Frans was going to vote at the General Election – believing that so irresponsible a person should not be allowed to vote at all – I quickly asked John de Swardt to tell us about his paintings.
Immediately he started off about his Veld Maiden.
“Not that one,” I said, kicking his shin, “I meant your other paintings. The kind that frighten the locusts.”
I felt that this Veld Maiden thing was not a fit subject to talk about, especially with a woman present. Moreover, it
