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“Well, then, Neef Org,” Jurie Steyn went on. “From the way you talk I can see that you are unacquainted with the customs of the Groot Marico. In the first place, I am a postmaster and a farmer. I don’t know which is the worst job, what with money orders and the blue-tongue. I have got to put axle-grease on my mule-cart and sealing wax on the mailbag. And sometimes I get mixed up. Any man in my position would. One day I’ll paste a revenue stamp on my off-mule and I’ll brand a half-moon and a bar on the Bekkersdal mailbag. Then there will be trouble. There will be trouble with my off-mule, I mean. The post office won’t notice any difference. But my off-mule is funny, that way. He’ll pull the mule-cart, all right. But then everything has got to be the way he wants it. He won’t have people laughing at him because he’s got a revenue stamp stuck on his behind. I sometimes think that my off-mule knows that a shilling revenue stamp is what you put on a piece of paper after you’ve told a justice of the peace a lot of lies –”
“Not lies,” Gysbert van Tonder interjected.
“A lot of lies,” Jurie Steyn went on, “about another man’s cattle straying into a person’s lucerne lands while that person was taking his sick child to Zeerust –”
Gysbert van Tonder, who was Jurie Steyn’s neighbour, half rose out of his riempies chair, then, and made some sneering remarks about Jurie Steyn and his off-mule. He said he never had much time for either of them. And he said he would not like to describe the way his lucerne lands looked after Jurie Steyn’s cattle had finished straying over them. He said he would not like to use that expression, because there was a stranger present.
Meneer Losper seemed interested, then, and sat well forward to listen. And it looked as though Gysbert van Tonder would have said the words, too. Only, At Naudé, who has a wireless to which he listens in regularly, put a stop to the argument. He said that this was a respectable voorkamer, with family portraits on the wall.
“And there’s Jurie Steyn’s wife in the kitchen, too,” At Naudé said. “You can’t use the same sort of language here as in the Volksraad, where there are all men.”
Actually, Jurie Steyn’s wife had gone out of the kitchen, about then. Ever since that young schoolmaster with the black hair parted in the middle had come to Bekkersdal, Jurie Steyn’s wife had taken a good deal of interest in education matters. Consequently, when the stranger, Org Losper, said he was from the department, Jurie Steyn’s wife thought right away – judging from his shifty appearance – that he might be a school inspector. And so sent a message to the young schoolmaster to warn him in time, so that he could put away the saws and hammers that he used for the private fretwork that he did in front of the class while the children were writing compositions.
In the meantime, Jurie Steyn was getting to the point.
“So you can’t expect me to be running a Boardinghouse as well as everything else, Neef Org,” he was saying. “But all the same, you are welcome to stay. And you can stay as long as you like. Only, you must not offer again to pay. If you had known more about these parts, you would also have known that the Groot Marico has got a very fine reputation for hospitality. When you come and stay with a man he gets insulted if you offer him money. But I shall be glad to invite you into my home as a member of my own family.”
Then Org Losper said that that was exactly what he didn’t want, anymore. And he was firm about it, too.
“When you’re a member of the family, you can’t say no to anything,” he explained. “In the Pilanesberg I tore my best trousers on the wire. I was helping, as a member of the family, to round up the donkeys for the watercart. At Nietverdiend a Large White bit a piece out of my second-best trousers and my leg. That was when I was a member of the family and was helping to carry buckets of swill to the pig troughs. The farmer said the Large White was just being playful that day. Well, maybe the Large White thought I was also a member of the family – his family, I mean. At Abjaterskop I nearly fell into a disused mineshaft on a farm there. Then I was a member of the family, assisting to throw a dead bull down the shaft. The bull had died of anthrax and I was helping to pull him by one haunch and I was walking backwards and when I jumped away from the opening of the mineshaft it was almost too late.
“I can also tell you what happened to me in the Dwarsberge when I was also a member of the family. And also about what happened when I was a member of the family at Derdepoort. I did not know that that family was having a misunderstanding with the family next door about water rights. And it was when I was opening a water furrow with a shovel that a load of buckshot went through my hat. As a member of the family, I was standing ankle-deep in the mud at the time, and so I couldn’t run very fast. So you see, when I say I would rather pay, it is not that I am ignorant of the very fine tradition that the Marico has for the friendly and bountiful entertainment that it accords the stranger. But I do not wish to presume further on your kindness. If I have much more Bushveld hospitality I might never see my wife and children again. It’s all very well being a member of somebody else’s family. But I have a duty to my own family. I want to get back to them alive.”
Johnny Coen remarked that next time Gysbert van Tonder had an American tourist on his hands, he need not take him to the Limpopo, but could just show him around the Marico farms.
It was then that Gysbert van Tonder asked Org Losper straight out what his business was. And, to our surprise, the stranger was very frank about it.
“It is a new job that has been made for me by the Department of Defence,” Org Losper said. “There wasn’t that post before. You see, I worked very hard at the last elections, getting people’s names taken off the electoral roll. You have no idea how many names I got taken off. I even got some of our candidate’s supporters crossed off. But you know how it is, we all make mistakes. It is a very secret post. It is a top Defence secret. I am under oath not to disclose anything about it. But I am free to tell you that I am making certain investigations on behalf of the Department of Defence. I am trying to find out whether something has been seen here. But, of course, the post has been made for me, if you understand what I mean.”
We said we understood, all right. And we also knew that, since he was under oath about it, the nature of Org Losper’s investigations in the Groot Marico would leak out sooner or later.
As it happened, we found out within the next couple of days. A Mahalapi who worked for Adriaan Geel told us. And then we realised how difficult Org Losper’s work was. And we no longer envied him his Government job – even though it had been especially created for him.
If you know the Mtosas, you’ll understand why Org Losper’s job was so hard. For instance, there was only one member of the whole Mtosa tribe who had ever had any close contact with white men. And he had unfortunately grown up among Trekboers, whose last piece of crockery that they had brought with them from the Cape had got broken almost a generation earlier.
We felt that the Department of Defence could have made an easier job for Org Losper than to send him round asking those questions of the Mtosas, they who did not even know what ordinary kitchen saucers were, leave alone flying ones.
Bull-calf
The Government lorry from Bekkersdal was late. Jurie Steyn had several times come from behind his post office counter and had stood at the front door, gazing in the direction of the poort.
“How am I going to get through the milking?” he asked in an aggrieved tone, cupping a hand over his eyes some more and staring across the kameeldorings. “I’ve had these mailbags ready and everything since early this morning – before the cattle went out of the kraal, even.”
Johnny Coen looked at the untidy bundles on the counter and his lip curled.
“Next time you make up the mailbags in the kraal, you should perhaps wait until the cattle have gone out,” Johnny Coen said. “Then they wouldn’t walk over the mailbags … Or was it pigs?”
To our surprise, Jurie Steyn did not take offence.
“I really do believe, sometimes,” he replied, thoughtfully, “that it would be better if I did go and do my post office