Mafeking Road by Herman Charles Bosman

Author:Herman Charles Bosman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2011-11-25T05:00:00+00:00

Hendrik did not answer. For some reason he did not want Piet to have the satisfaction of being told that his reconstruction of the incident was correct. Nevertheless, that was just how the thing had occurred. The herdsman was walking towards the wagon. He shouted something, not very loudly. And the next thing that Hendrik saw were brown coils vanishing into the grass with lightning movements, and the herdsman falling beside the wagon in a quivering heap. In his mind Hendrik could still see the glint of the sun on the sleek brown body of the snake.

“They also say – ” Piet Uys began again.

But Hendrik interrupted him.

He did not like the callous way in which Piet spoke about those things. Just as though it were an ordinary matter for a man to die like this, of snakebite, before their eyes, without his having had time, even, to make his peace with God. “You are older than I, Oom Piet,” Hendrik said. “Will you pray?” By that time the body had been lowered into the earth.

The white men stood together on one side of the grave. The kaffirs crowded together in a bunch on the other side. They were all bareheaded. Piet Uys did not pray long.

“Amen,” Hendrik said when Piet had finished.

“Amen,” the kaffirs said after him, self-conscious on account of their unfamiliarity with the white man’s burial rites. They were Bechuanas, and had a different way of disposing of the dead.

“Anyway, he was a good kaffir,” Piet Uys said, flinging a handful of earth into the grave, “we will sing a hymn for him, too. We will sing ‘Rust Myn Ziel’.”

Accordingly, the two white men sang a verse of this Dutch Reformed Church hymn, the kaffirs joining in as best they could.

Then the grave was covered up and the burial was over.

Hendrik van Jaarsveld was glad that the rainy season was approaching, bringing with it the prospect of the termination of the drought in Schweizer-Reneke. Then he could inspan his ox-wagon and trek home with his cattle. It was unnatural living alone like this in the bush with Piet Uys and the kaffirs. He wanted company.

It was very difficult having only one white man to talk to all the time, he decided. Especially when that man was Piet Uys. Piet said such stupid things, too. For instance, after the burial of the herdsman, he had said: “You know, Hendrik, they say that lightning never strikes in the same place twice. Well, it’s the same with a mamba. It never strikes twice in the same place, either.”

At this Piet had slapped Hendrik on the shoulder, expecting him to join in the joke – whatever it was.

“That’s a good one, isn’t it, Hendrik?” Piet said, “and I thought it out myself.”

“I hope we’re back in Schweizer-Reneke before you think out the next one,” Hendrik answered; then, because Piet looked at him questioningly, he added quickly, “I mean, so that you will have more people to tell it to.”

“I see,” Piet answered, and turned away.

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