The Complete Voorkamer Stories. Herman Charles Bosman
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the voorkamer and I’ll move into the stable. That’s at least one place that Duusman never goes into, anyway. He won’t be seen in a stable – not him. He’s much too stuck-up.”
Gysbert van Tonder said that that showed you how intelligent a handraised bull-calf like Duusman could be. To be able to tell the difference between Jurie Steyn’s voorkamer and a stable. Many a human being would hardly know the difference, even. Not at first glance, that was, Gysbert explained.
Now, although he was always saying things to Duusman’s detriment, Jurie Steyn was secretly very proud of his hansbul, and he really thought that Duusman was different from any other bull-calf in the Marico that had been brought up by hand. And so Jurie Steyn felt not a little flattered at Gysbert van Tonder’s remark.
“I won’t say Duusman hasn’t got brains,” Jurie Steyn acknowledged, modestly, “if only he’ll use them in the right way.”
We could not help feeling that, with those words, Jurie Steyn would like us to think that he himself had brains – just because he had brought Duusman up by hand.
In the meantime, Oupa Bekker had been nodding his head up and down.
“It’s all very well rearing a calf or a goat or a sheep by hand,” he announced, “but you mustn’t also educate him. The moment a bull-calf gets educated above his station in life, he’s got no more respect for you. He doesn’t seem to understand that, just because you’re older than he is, you must know more.”
“I wouldn’t say that’s always the case, Oupa,” Johnny Coen said. “I mean, it’s not just only age. There are also other things that broaden the mind – like travel, say.”
We knew, of course, that Johnny Coen was referring to the time he was working on the railways at Ottoshoop.
“Well, I wouldn’t object if Duusman took it into his head to travel a bit,” Jurie Steyn asserted. “It would do him good. He’ll soon find out that it’s not every hand-raised bull-calf that has got as good a home as he has. And he’s so inconsiderate. After he’s been loafing about the vlei all morning, Duusman will never think of wiping the clay from between his hooves before he comes walking into the voorkamer for his dish of kaboe-mealies. That’s a hand-raised bull-calf all over. But it’s my wife that spoilt him, of course. I knew right from the start that no good could come from her feeding him in the voorkamer. ‘Give Duusman his lunch in the kitchen, Truitjie,’ I used to say to my wife from the very beginning. ‘Then, later on, when he’s more grown up, he’ll be used to coming round to the back door for his meals. If Duusman gets into the habit of walking in at the front door he’ll start having ideas about himself before he’s much older. You watch if I’m not right.’ But she wouldn’t listen to me. Now you see what’s happening. I’m only looking forward to the day when Duusman will have grown so wide and fat that he won’t be able to come in through the door of the voorkamer anymore.”
That was the moment when Oupa Bekker giggled. It was a disturbing sort of sound. Oupa Bekker was, after all, somebody aged and respected. Except when he said silly things – such as when he said that he could make quite a good living even if mealies were only ten shillings a bag, never mind the new price of twenty-four shillings. Then we knew that he was just aged.
And the way Oupa Bekker giggled now was not pleasant. Even At Naudé looked unhappy. And At Naudé had a wireless set and had heard some queer noises coming over it in his time – and not merely as a result of his not having been properly tuned in, by any means. there was the time, for instance, when he invited several of us to come and listen in to what he informed us was an opera being broadcast, and right through, at intervals, At Naudé said, “Yes, I know what you kêrels think. You think it’s the atmospherics.”
“What I want to say is,” Oupa Bekker remarked, after his laughter had set over into coughing and Chris Welman had slapped – some of us thought punched – the old man vigorously on the back, “if you think that will be the end of your trouble with a bull-calf that you’ve reared by hand –”
Oupa Bekker gave signs of wanting to laugh again. But he stopped himself in time. That was when he saw Chris Welman, with a determined look in his eye, making a move to get out of his chair for the second time.
Oupa Bekker pulled himself together, then.
Before that, I had noticed a strained look on Chris Welman’s face. He did not seem to be himself, somehow. Chris Welman seemed to be taking it much too seriously, this nonsense that was being talked about Jurie Steyn’s bull-calf.
“You say your wife has spoilt Duusman, Jurie?” Oupa Bekker asked.
“Completely,” Jurie Steyn admitted.
Oupa Bekker looked thoughtful.
“But you don’t think,” he asked, “that you might also perhaps have had a hand in spoiling him? Think carefully, now.”
“Well,” Jurie said, somewhat reluctantly, “a little, maybe.”
That seemed to be the sum of what Oupa Bekker wanted to know. In any case, he said nothing more. That made us all feel uncomfortable. It was a good deal worse than when he giggled in that annoying old-man sort of way, that was not much different from an old woman’s giggle. But now he remained silent. And you couldn’t go and thump an old man on his back just for keeping quiet. At least, in public you couldn’t. Not when people were looking.
“Duusman chew?” Oupa Bekker asked.
“Chew – how do you mean, chew?” Jurie Steyn repeated. We could see he was hedging.
“Tobacco,” Oupa Bekker insisted, firmly.
“Well,” Jurie Steyn said, “he does come in every morning for a plug of Piet Retief rolled tobacco. It started as a joke, of course. But, all right, if you put it that way, Duusman does chew. But he spits most of it out again. I started him off on the habit. It seemed funny to me, the idea of a bull-calf chewing. But he’s got into the habit, now. It seemed funny at the time, if you understand what I mean. But now, well, I think Duusman will burst the doorframe down if he doesn’t get his chew every morning –”
“And you blame it on your wife,” Oupa Bekker said. And he started laughing again. And even when his laughter went up into very high notes he did not bother to look round to see how Chris Welman was taking it.
It was almost as though Oupa Bekker knew that Chris Welman would not slam him on the back again, even if Oupa Bekker’s laughter ended in his coughing his head off.
“You yourself can’t stop chewing tobacco, no matter how hard you try – can you, now?” Oupa Bekker remarked to Jurie. “I know I can’t. And all I’ve got left are a few top teeth that aren’t near as good as yours or Duusman’s.”
When Jurie Steyn did not answer, Oupa Bekker said that he should send Duusman to the butcher’s shop. But he did not think that Duusman would make even good butcher’s meat, Oupa Bekker added.
Well, we all knew, of course, that if you had once reared a bull-calf by hand, you could never send him to the butcher’s shop, even if the land company were foreclosing on you.
It was a relief to us all when the lorry arrived in dust and noise and with milk-cans and circulars from shopkeepers.
But we should have felt more surprised, somehow, when, along with the driver and his assistant, there also alighted from the lorry young Tobie, Chris Welman’s son, who had gone to Johannesburg and whom we had not seen for several years.
Tobie Welman was slim and good-looking, and he walked with a light step, and his black hair was slicked back from his forehead, and a cigarette dangled from his lip.
And when Chris Welman walked out to meet Tobie, as though he had been expecting him, we wondered why he had not told us that his son was coming back. We would, after all, not have said anything about Tobie Welman having been in reform school.
Duusman forced his way into the voorkamer, about then, lowing. “Moo,” Duusman said.