The Complete Voorkamer Stories. Herman Charles Bosman
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told in Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer grew, if not longer, then, at least, taller.
“But this isn’t the point of what I have been trying to explain,” At Naudé interrupted a story of Gysbert van Tonder’s that was getting a bit confused in parts, through Gysbert van Tonder not being quite clear as to what a werewolf was. “When I read that bit in the newspaper I started wondering how must a man feel, after he has grown up with adopted parents and he discovers, quite late in life, through seeing his birth certificate for the first time, that he isn’t white, after all. That is what I am trying to get at. Supposing Gysbert were to find out suddenly –”
At Naudé pulled himself up short. Maybe there were one or two things about a werewolf that Gysbert van Tonder wasn’t too sure about, and he would allow himself to be corrected by Oupa Bekker on such points. But there were certain things he wouldn’t stand for.
“All right,” At Naudé said hastily, “I don’t mean Gysbert van Tonder, specially. What I am trying to get at is, how would any one of us feel? How would any white man feel, if he has passed as white all his life, and he sees for the first time, from his birth certificate, that his grandfather was coloured? I mean, how would he feel? Think of that awful moment when he looks at the palms of his hands and he sees –”
“He can have that awful moment,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “I’ve looked at the palm of my hand. It’s a white man’s palm. And my fingernails have also got proper half-moons.”
At Naudé said he had never doubted that. No, there was no need for Gysbert van Tonder to come any closer and show him. He could see quite well enough just from where he was sitting. After Chris Welman had pulled Gysbert van Tonder back onto the rusbank by his jacket, counselling him not to do anything foolish, since At Naudé did not mean him, Oupa Bekker started talking about a white child in Schweizer-Reneke that had been stolen out of its cradle by a family of baboons.
“I haven’t seen that cradle myself,” Oupa Bekker acknowledged, modestly. “But I met many people who have. After the child had been stolen, neighbours from as far as the Orange River came to look at that cradle. And when they looked at it they admired the particular way that Heilart Nortjé – that was the child’s father – had set about making his household furniture, with glued klinkpenne in the joints, and all. But the real interest about the cradle was that it was empty, proving that the child had been stolen by baboons. I remember how one neighbour, who was not on very good terms with Heilart Nortjé, went about the district saying that it could only have been baboons.
“But it was many years before Heilart Nortjé and his wife saw their child again. By saw, I mean getting near enough to be able to talk to him and ask him how he was getting on. For he was always too quick, from the way the baboons had brought him up. At intervals Heilart Nortjé and his wife would see the tribe of baboons sitting on a rant, and their son, young Heilart, would be in the company of the baboons. And once, through his field-glasses, Heilart had been able to observe his son for quite a few moments. His son was then engaged in picking up a stone and laying hold of a scorpion that was underneath it. The speed with which his son pulled off the scorpion’s sting and proceeded to eat up the rest of the scorpion whole filled the father’s heart of Heilart Nortjé with a deep sense of pride.
“I remember how Heilart talked about it. ‘Real intelligence,’ Heilart announced with his chest stuck out. ‘A real baboon couldn’t have done it quicker or better. I called my wife, but she was a bit too late. All she could see was him looking as pleased as anything and scratching himself. And my wife and I held hands and we smiled at each other and we asked each other, where does he get it from?’
“But then there were times again when that tribe of baboons would leave the Schweizer-Reneke area and go deep into the Kalahari, and Heilart Nortjé and his wife would know nothing about what was happening to their son, except through reports from farmers near whose homesteads the baboons had passed. Those farmers had a lot to say about what happened to some of their sheep, not to talk of their mealies and watermelons. And Heilart would be very bitter about those farmers. Begrudging his son a few prickly-pears, he said.
“And it wasn’t as though he hadn’t made every effort to get his son back, Heilart said, so that he could go to catechism classes, since he was almost of age to be confirmed. He had set all sorts of traps for his son, Heilart said, and he had also thought of shooting the baboons, so that it would be easier, after that, to get his son back. But there was always the danger, firing into a pack like that, of his shooting his own son.
“The neighbour that I have spoken of before,” Oupa Bekker continued, “who was not very well-disposed towards Heilart Nortjé, said that the real reason Heilart didn’t shoot was because he didn’t always know – actually know – which was his son and which was one of the more flatheaded kees-baboons.”
It seemed that this was going to be a very long story. Several of us started getting restive … So Johnny Coen asked Oupa Bekker, in a polite sort of way, to tell us how it all ended.
“Well, Heilart Nortjé caught his son, afterwards,” Oupa Bekker said. “But I am not sure if Heilart was altogether pleased about it. His son was so hard to tame. And then the way he caught him. It was the simplest sort of baboon trap of all … Yes, that one. A calabash with a hole in it just big enough for you to put your hand in, empty, but that you can’t get your hand out of again when you’re clutching a fistful of mealies that was put at the bottom of the calabash. Heilart Nortjé never got over that, really. He felt it was a very shameful thing that had happened to him. The thought that his son, in whom he had taken so much pride, should have allowed himself to be caught in the simplest form of monkey-trap.”
When Oupa Bekker paused, Jurie Steyn said that it was indeed a sad story, and was, no doubt, perfectly true. There was just a certain tone in Jurie Steyn’s voice that made Oupa Bekker continue.
“True in every particular,” Oupa Bekker declared, nodding his head a good number of times. “The landdrost came over to see about it, too. They sent for the landdrost so that he could make a report about it. I was there, that afternoon, in Heilart Nortjé’s voorkamer, when the landdrost came. And there were a good number of other people, also. And Heilart Nortjé’s son, half-tamed in some ways but still baboon-wild in others, was there also. The landdrost studied the birth certificate very carefully. Then the landdrost said that what he had just been present at surpassed ordinary human understanding. And the landdrost took off his hat in a very solemn fashion.
“We all felt very embarrassed when Heilart Nortjé’s son grabbed the hat out of the landdrost’s hand and started biting pieces out of the crown.”
When Oupa Bekker said those words it seemed to us like the end of a story. Consequently, we were disappointed when At Naudé started making further mention of that piece of news he had read in the daily paper. So there was nothing else for it but that we had to talk about Flippus Biljon. For Flippus Biljon’s case was just the opposite of the case of the man that At Naudé’s newspaper wrote about.
Because he had been adopted by a coloured family, Flippus Biljon had always regarded himself as a coloured man. And then one day, quite by accident, Flippus Biljon saw his birth certificate. And from that birth certificate it was clear that Flippus Biljon was as white as you or I. You can imagine how Flippus Biljon must have felt about it. Especially after he had gone to see the magistrate at Bekkersdal, and the magistrate, after studying the birth certificate, confirmed the fact that Flippus Biljon was a white man.
“Thank you, baas,” Flippus Biljon said. “Thank you very much, my basie.”
Play within a Play
“But what did Jacques le Français want to put a thing like that on for?” Gysbert van Tonder asked.
In those words he conveyed something of what we all felt about the latest play with which the famous Afrikaans actor, Jacques le Français, was touring the platteland. A good number of us had gone over to Bekkersdal to attend the play. But – as always happens in such cases – those who hadn’t actually seen the play knew just as much about it as those who had. More, even, sometimes.
“What