Mafeking Road (17 page)

“What's more,” Rossouw went on, “Tjaart van Rensburg's lawyer never once cross-questioned me or called me a liar. Whereas he spent half a day in calling that kaffir names. Doesn't that lawyer think that my evidence is of any value to the court?”

Rossouw said a lot more things like that. Some of the burghers laughed at his remarks, but others took him seriously, and agreed with him, and said it was a shame that such things should be allowed, and that it all proved that the president did not have the interests of the nation at heart.

You can see, from this, that it must have been a difficult task to govern the Transvaal in those days.

The case lasted almost a week, what with all the witnesses, and the long speeches made by the prosecution and the defence.
Also, the landdrost said a great many learned things about the Roman-Dutch law. During all this time Francina sat in court with that same unearthly look in her eyes. They say that she never once wept. Even when the doctor, a Hollander, explained how he cut open Andries Theron's body, and found that the bullet had gone through his heart, the expression on Francina's face did not change.

People who knew her grew anxious about her state. They said it was impossible for her to continue in this way, with that stony grief inside her. They said that if she did not break down and weep she could not go on living much longer.

Anyway, Francina was not called as a witness. Perhaps they felt that there was nothing of importance that she could say.

So the days passed.

And Rossouw was still complaining about the unfair way he had been treated in the witness-box, when Tjaart van Rensburg, his hat tilted over the eye and his wrists close together in front of him, strode into the courthouse for the last time.

The landdrost looked less important on that morning. And the jurymen did not seem very happy. But they were not the kind of men to shirk a duty they had sworn to carry out.

Tjaart van Rensburg was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was passed on him.

“Yes, I am guilty,” he answered. “I shot Andries Theron.”

His voice was steady, and as he spoke he twirled the brim of his hat slowly round and round between his fingers.

And that was how it came about that, early one winter's morning, a number of kaffirs were swinging their picks into the hard gravel, digging a hole by the side of the courthouse.

A small group had gathered at the graveside. Some were kneeling in prayer. Among the spectators was Francina Theron, looking very frail and slender in her widow's weeds. When the grave was deep enough a roughly-constructed coffin was lifted out of a cart that bore, painted on its side, the arms of the republic.

The grave was filled in. The newly-made mound of gravel and red earth was patted smooth with the shovels.

Then, for the first time since her husband's death, Francina wept.

She flung herself at full-length on the mound, and trailed her fingers through the pebbles and fresh earth. And calling out tender and passionate endearments, Francina sobbed noisily on the grave of her lover.

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 was Sunday.

Nevertheless, that kick came too late. De Swardt rubbed his shin a few times and started on his subject, and although Frans and I cleared our throats awkwardly at different parts, and Sannie looked on the floor with her pretty cheeks very red, the young painter explained everything about that picture and what it meant to him.

“It's a dream I have had for a long time, now,” he said at the end, “and always she comes to me, and when I put out my arms to clasp her to me she vanishes, and I am left with only her memory in my heart. But when she comes the whole world is clothed in a terrible beauty.”

“That's more than she is clothed in, anyway,” Frans said, “judging from what you have told us about her.”

“She's a spirit. She's the spirit of the veld,” De Swardt murmured, “she whispers strange and enchanting things. Her coming is like the whisper of the wind. She's not of the earth at all.”

“Oh, well,” Frans said shortly, “you can keep these Uitlander
ghost-women of yours. A Boer girl is good enough for ordinary fellows like me and Schalk Lourens.”

So the days passed.

John de Swardt finished a few more bits of rock and drought-stricken kakiebos, and I had got so far as to persuade him to label the worst-looking one “Frans Welman's Farm.”

Then one morning he came to me in great excitement.