The Complete Voorkamer Stories. Herman Charles Bosman
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about it, too, we said. It was almost because it was so easy for him to be a seer that he didn’t value it. And so we were not surprised when Johnny Coen told us that when he offered Piet Siener his watch and chain, he wouldn’t take it.
“Piet Siener was quite cross about it, too,” Johnny Coen proceeded. “He said that what he had told me was nothing – just nothing at all. And he said he already had over two dozen watches and chains, and what he would do with any more he just didn’t know. I felt that was one of the few things that Piet Siener really didn’t know. And he said that if I had no more use for my new guitar with the picture of gold angels on it, and if I was determined to give him a little present …”
So we said that that was Piet Siener all over. He would never accept from you anything that you thought something of. If you did give him a present, then it had to be something that you were finished with.
“Like the time I went to see Piet Siener about a cure for my wife’s asthma,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “It was just after I had bought that mealie-planter with the green wheels. I did not say anything to Piet Siener about my wife’s asthma. There was no need for me to. In fact, before I could tell him what I had come about, he told me something quite different. That’s how great a seer he is. He said he could see a most awful disaster hanging over my head. No, he wouldn’t tell me what that disaster was, because if he did tell me it would turn my hair grey overnight, having that size of calamity hanging over my head. It was more than flesh and blood could stand.
“But there was still time to turn that misfortune aside from me onto someone else. So I asked him would he turn it aside onto the market master in Zeerust, and I wouldn’t care how much of a disaster it was then, I said. And Piet Siener said all right. And he said that if I had to give him a little present, well, if I had perhaps thought of throwing away my mealie-planter with the green wheels, then I mustn’t do any such thing. He would take it, he said.”
After that Jurie Steyn told us about the last time Piet Siener came to his post office, and about how there was in the post bag for Jurie Steyn a new kind of hair clipper he had ordered from Johannesburg, having seen a picture of it in the Kerkbode. “I told Piet Siener what was in the parcel,” Jurie continued. “And do you know what, before I had unwrapped it, even, Piet Siener said I mustn’t throw it away on the rubbish heap, or give it to the first Bechuana I saw.”
“Well, can you beat that?” At Naudé asked, and in his tone there was real admiration.
It was while we were still talking about how wonderful he was that Piet Siener himself came into the post office. He walked with a quick step, his black beard flapping. You could see he was excited.
Then he walked straight up to the counter and said to Jurie Steyn: “There’s something come for me in a small packing case. It was sent free on rail.”
We nudged each other when we heard that. We felt that there was just nothing you could keep from the seer.
“I got the rail note yesterday,” Piet Siener said, producing a piece of paper from his pocket. “Weight 98 lb., it says on the consignment. I’ll take it with me.”
Jurie Steyn pointed to the crate in the corner.
“I could have guessed as much,” Piet Siener said when he lifted the crate and then turned it round. “Look, it says ‘This side up, with care.’ Instead of that you’ve got it standing on its end. I could have guessed that would happen.”
“You mean you could have divined it,” At Naudé said. But we didn’t laugh. The moment seemed too solemn, somehow.
Jurie Steyn apologised and said there was no doubt something very precious inside. And we realised that Jurie spoke those words as though he meant them. It wasn’t the way he usually apologised to people in his post office, that made you feel sorry you had brought the matter up at all.
Piet Siener said that it was all right, then. But he said that what was inside that crate was something of such importance that you couldn’t be careful enough with it. He had ordered it from America, he said. And it was the latest invention in electro-biology and some kind of rays that he hadn’t quite got the hang of yet, but that he was still studying the pamphlet. By means of that instrument you could tell if there was gold or diamonds under the ground.
“You can stand it on a tripod anywhere you like,” Piet Siener explained. “And it will tell you what minerals there are in the crust of the earth under your feet up to a depth of two miles. Think of that – two miles.”
We did think of it, after Piet Siener had gone out with the crate. And we said he couldn’t be much of a siener if he didn’t know what was two miles under the ground without having to look through an electric instrument that he had to order from America. And we thought nothing of his gift anymore.
He could throw his seer’s mantle away on the rubbish heap, now, for all we cared. Or he could make a present of it to the first down-and-out Bechuana passing along the road.
Potchefstroom Willow
“The trouble,” At Naudé said, “about getting the latest war news over the wireless, is that Klaas Smit and his Boeremusiek orchestra start up right away after it, playing ‘Die Nooi van Potchefstroom’. Now, it isn’t that I don’t like that song –”
So we said that it wasn’t as though we didn’t like it, either. Gysbert van Tonder began to hum the tune. Johnny Coen joined in, singing the words softly – “Vertel my neef, vertel my oom, Is hierdie die pad na Potchefstroom?” In a little while we were all singing. Not very loudly, of course. For Jurie Steyn was conscious of the fact that his post office was a public place, and he frowned on any sort of out of the way behaviour in it. We still remembered the manner in which Jurie Steyn spoke to Chris Welman the time Chris was mending a pair of his wife’s veldskoens in the post office, using the corner of the counter as a last.
“I can’t object to your sitting in my post office, waiting for the Government lorry,” Jurie Steyn said, “as long as you’re white. You’re entitled to sit here. You’re also entitled to drink the coffee that my wife is soft-hearted enough to bring round to you on a tray. I’m sure I don’t know why she does it. I was in the post office in Johannesburg, once, and I didn’t see anybody coming around there, with cups of coffee on a tray. If you wanted coffee in the Johannesburg post office you would have to go round to the kitchen door for it, I suppose. And I feel that’s what my wife should do, also. But she doesn’t. All right – she’s soft-hearted. But I won’t let any man come and mend boots on my post office counter and right next to the official brass scales, too, I won’t. If I allow that, the next thing a man will do is he’ll come in here and sit down on my rusbank and read a book. We all know my voorkamer is a public place, but I will not let anybody take liberties in it.”
For that reason we did not raise our voices very much when we sang “Die Nooi van Potchefstroom”. But it was a catchy song, and Jurie Steyn joined in a little, too, afterwards. Not that he let himself go in any way, of course. He sang in a reserved and dignified fashion, that made you feel he would yet go far. You felt that even the Postmaster-General in Pretoria, on the occasion of a member of the public coming to him to complain about a registered letter that had got lost, say – well, even the Postmaster-General would not have been able to sit back in his chair and sing “Die Nooi van Potchefstroom” in as elevated a manner as what Jurie Steyn was doing at that very moment.
Before the singing had quite died down, Oupa Bekker was saying that he knew Potchefstroom when he was still a child. It was in the very old days, Oupa Bekker said, and the far side foundations of the church on Kerkplein had not sunk nearly as deep as they had done today. He said he remembered the first time that there was a split in the Church. It was between the Doppers and the Hervormdes, he said. And it was quite a serious split. And because he was young, then, he thought it had to do with the way the brickwork on the wall nearest the street had to be constantly plastered up, from top to bottom, the more the foundations sank.
“I remember showing my father that piece of church wall,” Oupa Bekker continued, “and I asked my father if the Doppers had done