The Complete Voorkamer Stories. Herman Charles Bosman
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of Hendrik Prinsloo’s face, without noticing anything wrong. Hendrik Prinsloo didn’t notice anything, either, at first, but when he did he made such a fuss, shouting “Elephants” and such-like, that At Naudé, who had remained at the schoolroom window, came running up to the Cape-cart, fearing the worst.
“Is that all?” At Naudé asked, when it was explained to him what had happened. “From the way Hendrik Prinsloo was carrying on, I thought some clumsy –––” he used a strong word, “some clumsy ––– had kicked over the jar.”
In the meantime Hendrik Prinsloo had risen to a half-sitting posture, with his hand up to his face. “Feel here, kêrels,” he said. “The middle part of my face has suddenly gone all flat, and my jaw is all sideways. Just feel here.”
The farmers around the Cape-cart were fortunately able – in between singing “Yo-ho-yo” – to set Hendrik Prinsloo’s mind at rest. He was worrying about nothing at all, they assured him. His face had always been that way.
Nevertheless, Hendrik Prinsloo did not appear to be as grateful as he should have been for that explanation. He said quite a lot of things that we felt did not fit in with a school concert.
“The schoolmaster says the Joernaal is going to be read out shortly,” At Naudé announced. “Well, I hope there is going to be nothing in it like the sort of things Hendrik Prinsloo is saying now. All the same, I wonder what there is going to be in the Joernaal – you know what I mean – funny stories about people we all know.”
Gysbert van Tonder started telling us about a Joernaal he had once heard read out at a Nagelspruit school concert. A deputation of farmers saw the schoolmaster onto the Government lorry immediately afterwards, Gysbert van Tonder said. The schoolmaster’s clothes and books they sent after him, carriage forward, next day.
“I wonder, though,” At Naudé said, “will young Vermaak mention in the Joernaal about himself and – and – you know who I mean – that will be a laugh.”
As it turned out, however, there was no mention of that in the Joernaal. Nor was there any reference, direct or indirect, to anybody else in the Marico, either. In compiling the Joernaal, all that the schoolmaster had done was to cut a whole lot of jokes out of back numbers of magazines and to include also some funny stories that had been popular in the Marico for many years, and for generations, even. And because there was nothing that you enjoy as much as hearing an old joke for the hundredth time, the Joernaal got the audience into a state of uproarious good humour.
It was all so jolly that Jurie Steyn’s wife did not even say anything sarcastic when Alida van Niekerk went and picked up the schoolmaster’s programme, that had dropped onto the floor, for him.
The concert in the schoolroom went on until quite late, and everybody said how successful it was. The concert at the Cape-cart, which nearly all the fathers joined in, afterwards, was perhaps even more successful, and lasted a good deal longer. And Chris Welman did get his chance, there, to sing “Boereseun”, with actions.
And when Hendrik Prinsloo drove off eventually, in his Cape-cart, into the night, there was handshaking all round, and they cheered him, and everybody asked him to be sure and come round again to the next school concert, also.
Next day there was only the locked door of the old school building to show that it was the end of term.
And at the side of a footpath that a solitary child walked along to and from school lay fragments of a torn-up quarterly report.
Railway Deputation
Because it was nearing the end of the Volksraad session, it was decided that a deputation of Dwarsberg farmers would go and call on the member when he got back to Pretoria. Over the generations it had developed into an institution – a deputation of farmers going to see the Volksraad member about a railway line through the Bushveld.
The promise of a railway line was an essential part of any election speech delivered north of Sephton’s Nek. A candidate would no more contemplate leaving that promise out of his speech than he would think of omitting the joke about the Cape Coloured man who went to sleep in the graveyard. For a candidate not to mention the railway line through the Bushveld would be just as much of a shock to his constituents as if the candidate had forgotten to ask an ouderling to open the meeting with prayer.
But we never seemed to get that railway line, somehow.
“What’s the good of a deputation, anyway?” Jurie Steyn asked. “When you think of what happened to the last deputation, I mean. Or take the deputation before that, when I was one of the delegates. Well, I’ll say this much for our Volksraad member – he did take us to the bioscope, because we were strangers to Pretoria. And he spoke up for us, too, when a girl with yellow hair sitting in a glass compartment asked how far from the front we wanted to be. And our Volksraad member said not too near the front, because it was a film with shooting in it, and he didn’t want anything to happen to us, seeing how we were his constituents.”
Jurie Steyn said that the girl with yellow hair and a military-looking man in a red-and-gold uniform who opened the door for them – because they were friends of the Volksraad member, no doubt – laughed a good deal.
“I must say that our Volksraad member is very considerate that way,” Jurie Steyn added. “It made us feel at home in the city, straight off, having that pretty girl and that high army man so friendly and everything. When we came out of the bioscope and they saw us again, the two of them started laughing right from the beginning, almost. That made us feel as though we belonged, if you understand what I mean.”
Then Gysbert van Tonder told us about the time when he was a member of a railway-line deputation in Pretoria. And he said the same thing about how thoughtful the Volksraad member was in regard to giving the delegates pleasure.
“He took us to the merry-go-round,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “To right in front of the merry-go-round, as far as his motor-car could go. And he told the man who collected the tickets that we were friends of his from the platteland and that the man must keep a look out to see that Oom Kasper Geel’s beard didn’t get tangled in the machinery that made the horses turn round and round. So everything was very friendly, straight away. You’ve got to admit that our Volksraad member has got a touch for that sort of thing. The man that our Volksraad member spoke to about us nearly fell off the merry-go-round himself, laughing.”
We all said that we knew, of course, that a delegation that we sent from the Bushveld to Pretoria about the railway line could always be sure of a good time. Our Volksraad member never minded how much trouble he put himself to in the way of introducing the delegation to the best people, and providing the delegation with the classiest entertainments that the big city offered, and making the delegation feel really at home through the things he said about the delegation to persons standing around. Like the time he bought the delegates a packet of bananas and a tin of fish and he showed them where they could go and eat it.
“He went with us right up to the building,” Gysbert van Tonder, who was one of the delegates on that occasion also, said. “In fact, he took us right in at the front door. There were koedoe and gemsbok and tsessebe horns all round the walls, just like in my voorkamer. But big – you’ve got no idea how big. And grand – all along the walls were glass cases and stuffed giraffes and medals with gold and brass flower-pots and things. It was the finest dining room you could ever imagine. And our Volksraad member told the owner of the place that we were from his constituency and that he must look after us and that, above all, he mustn’t keep us there. The owner, who was dressed all in blue, with a blue cap, laughed a lot, then, and so we were all as at home, there, as you please, and he showed us what staircase we had to go up by.”
Gysbert van Tonder said that all they found to sit on, upstairs, was a tamboetie riempiesbank with a piece of string in front of it, that they had to unfasten, first. It was a comfortable enough riempiesbank, Gysbert said, but a bit on the old-fashioned side, he thought. On the left was a statue in white stone of a young woman without much clothes on who was bending forward with her arms folded, because of the cold. On the right was a stuffed hippopotamus.
Gysbert