Too Late the Phalarope

  But the girl’s father would not believe that she had run away, for she had been of a quiet and obedient nature; nor would he and the girl’s mother have opposed her wishes had she wished to marry some man, nor would they have been harsh and unforgiving had she been found with child. Days passed, and there was no news of her. Smith and his wife, who lived already in a second terror greater than the first, having done that which they had never thought of all their lives, passed under a third and yet greater terror when the police said to them, it looks like murder.

  No one would have murdered the girl out of greed, for she had nothing; nor out of jealousy, for she had no lovers; nor out of anger, for she was submissive and gentle by nature. Therefore it was done from fear. And if a man of her own race and colour had made her with child, he would not have been afraid and murdered her, but would have gone shamefaced to her father, to confess and make reparation, as was their custom. Therefore it was a white man; and who, in that lonely and deserted place, but the man who was her master? So Smith and his wife passed under the last and greatest terror of them all, when the police came looking about the farm.

  On the second day they found blood, on one of the blades of the hundred blades of a hummock of grass, one of the thousands, the ten thousands of hummocks on the farm. On the third day they found the head of the girl, on the fourth her body; then they knew she had been with child. Smith, a religious man after his own fashion, and if doubtful of the love of God, assured of His wrath, confessed, and his wife with him; and the great machinery of the law, having found him, turned to its task of retribution.

  This was the case that men talked about in low voices, in every town and on every farm of the grass country, and in many another place in South Africa. And in the locations of the black people, and in the servants’ rooms, they talked about it also, with anger and horror, and with a certain wonder and awe of this sudden manifestation of the certitude and majesty of the white man’s law.

  And I? Let me write it without fear, being now beyond loss. It was said by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, lo of old it was said to you, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, use not force against an evil man. And it was said by Him also, when He hung suffering on the cross, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And again it was said by Him, judge not that ye be not judged. And yet again, whosoever offends one of these little ones (and I take it this is true of one unborn), it were better that a millstone were hung round his neck, and he were thrown into the sea. And the Apostle Paulus wrote to the Romans, let everyone put himself under the magistrates, because there is no power that is not from God, and all powers are ordered by Him.

  Therefore my mind was confused, but I am one of a people who in this matter of white and black suffer no confusion. Therefore I said to myself, what indeed many others said, what even I believe my brother would have said, let the man be hanged and the woman go free. For my brother believed as the Apostle Paulus, that the husband is the head of the wife, and that her true nature is to be obedient; which thing indeed he practised in his own house. Yet I grieved for the man in my heart, that did such evil because he was in terror.

  AND THE captain was restless in his mind, and came back to the lieutenant’s office, telling him to go on with his work, and standing about there, looking out of the window, and saying nothing.

  Then at last he spoke.

  — God knows, he said, I don’t.

  And went out again.

  And the lieutenant sat at his desk, looking at his papers and seeing nothing, and saying over and over in his heart, God wees my genadig, o Here Jesus wees my genadig.

  The telephone rang, and it was his mother.

  — Son, what happened this morning?

  He knew her face was full of care and apprehension, and he answered her light-heartedly.

  — Ah, I was caught, he said. Redhanded.

  — He told me about it.

  — Did he?

  — Yes, and that’s strange. He said he went up to you, determined to be friendly. But when he saw the stamps the devil came into him. Why should he tell me such a thing?

  — I don’t know, mother.

  — Perhaps he meant to tell you, Pieter.

  — Perhaps he did.

  — Don’t take it seriously, son.

  — Mother, he treated us like children.

  — Son, she said, don’t take it seriously.

  — All right, mother.

  — Here’s Tante Sophie, she said.

  Then I said to him, you won’t forget his birthday?

  — As if I would dare. What shall I get him? A pipe?

  — Can’t you forget about the pipe, I said. It wasn’t because it was from you. He just didn’t like it.

  — I’m getting him a book, he said.

  — You’re joking, Pieter.

  For we all knew that he read only one Book.

  — I’ve got it already, he said.

  — What is it?

  — The Life of General Smuts, he said.

  — Now I know you’re joking.

  — Wait and see, he said.

  He put down the telephone, and said to himself in English, be damned to the stamps. He settled down to his papers, but now he was thinking about the pipe. So it was just that his father didn’t like the pipe? They knew as well as he, when the family was there together, and the pipe there in the rack for all to see, that not one of them would have dared to say to him, Father, you’ve never smoked Pieter’s pipe.

  He went through the work of the day grimly, and at five o’clock came out into the street. When he had no wish to talk, none could avoid it better than he. No one would have dared to break into his abstraction, for the honour in which he was held was of fear as well as affection. That is why many said that he would be the captain of the Springboks, because of the strange authority that he had over men.

  When he reached his home, Nella brought him coffee, and a new biscuit that she was trying.

  — How is it, she asked.

  — It’s good, he said.

  He ate some more of it, like some judge at a show.

  — But not so good as your last.

  He could hear the children splashing in the bath, and he finished the coffee and biscuit, and got up to go to them. But before he reached the door, Nella spoke to him; he saw she was not looking at him, and he was filled with irritable resignation.

  — Yes.

  — What’s the matter with you, Pieter?

  She spoke in a low voice, which he gloomily supposed was a mark of tragedy.

  — Why ask, he said lightly. Is it because I didn’t like the biscuit?

  — It’s nothing to do with the biscuit, she said.

  — It’s because I don’t talk.

  — That’s only part of it, she said.

  — I’ve told you that after a day’s work I don’t feel like talking. I want to be quiet.

  — You’ll be quiet all evening, she said. Unless someone comes to talk football. And even they don’t come so often. We might be in the desert.

  He looked at her helplessly.

  — Sometimes I wish that I were a stamp, she said. Then you might look at me.

  The mention of the stamps angered him. He suddenly thought of van Belkum, the school teacher, who never stopped talking, who talked all day in school and talked all night at home, about nothing at all, about the weather, and the aeroplane that had crashed in India, and whether a big family was better than a small family, and the rising prices, and the Ford versus the Chevrolet, and the bad and good points of the Jews, and the misery of cancer, and the car that was stolen outside his very house.

  — You should have married van Belkum, he said. Then you could have talked.

  — It’s not the talking, she said. It’s you, your mood.

  — What mood?

  — Your black mood.

  He laughed without mirth.

  — I haven’t a black mood, he said.

  ??
? Black, she said, black. You weren’t like that when you were younger.

  — No one was.

  — You evade me.

  — You evade me too, he said.

  She seemed to have finished speaking, she did not look at him, he knew there would be tears in her eyes. For one moment he thought he would comfort her, but rebelled against it.

  — I’ll go to the children, he said. They don’t know about my moods.

  She turned quickly, and sure enough there were tears in her eyes.

  — That’s true, she said. I often envy them.

  — They give something to me, he said angrily. That’s my nature. I give when I’m given.

  She turned back to face the table.

  — I can’t go over it all again, she said.

  He said to her urgently, childishly, one day you’ll regret it.

  With that threat he left her, and went to the bathroom. The small boy called to him.

  — I’m ready, father.

  He put the towel round the small body, and lifted it up, and pressed it against his own, and pressed the small wet cheek against his cheek, with fierce gentleness, as though the warm flesh could assuage the pain of his moods and angers, the whole misery that he himself hated and could not understand.

  Ag, he wanted from the girl what she could not give, for all her lovingness. For he was the one that was like a god, not she. He was the one that had read all the books, and had been up and down the continent of Africa, and in Italy and England, and had flown in the air and sailed on the sea. He was the one that had commanded men, and seen them kill and being killed. He was the one that had had the great crowds clapping him, and had received praise and honours. But she was the country girl, quiet and shy and chaste, as most of our country girls are. She was frightened of Johannesburg, and of the evil things that men and women do, even of staying in an hotel. She was frightened even of the laughter that came out of the Royal Bar, where men like her father and brothers were jesting a little coarse and rough. Therefore when he in his extremity asked for more of her love, she shrank from him, thinking it was the coarseness of a man. Then the hard hand of Fate struck her across the face, and shocked her into knowledge, but only after we had been destroyed.

  IT WAS A PERFECT DAY when the lieutenant went to look for Stephanie. It had rained in the night, and the grass country was green and fresh, with the cool wind blowing, and the grass-larks calling from the veld. The red road was firm after the rain, and there was no dust to spoil the freshness of the day, or the cleanness of the grass country, or the purity of the great bowl of the sky, with the white clouds floating. It was the kind of country where he was born, that he had roamed over as a boy, after the partridge and the wild duck on the pans. Young Vorster, who was driving, who thought there was no man like him except perhaps the captain, saw the lieutenant grow back into the boy, and heard him saying, not once or twice but many times, this is the country, this is the country. The lieutenant sat, not back in repose, but forward in eagerness, drinking in the air and the wide expanse, talking more than the young constable had ever heard him talk before. He pointed out the homesteads of the farms, saying who lived in them, and how many morgen they had there, and what the grown-up children were doing now. And if the homestead could not be seen, for the farms are rich and large in the grass country, he would say where it lay, and what trees grew there, and that there was a girl there, lovely and true, who would make a good wife for a young constable, and might one day bring him riches, so that he could give up the Police, and ride round in the sun and air. And what was better than that, for in the rain you could hear the plovers calling, and the piet-my-vrou would cry from the kloof, which was like a hand suddenly plucking at the strings of the heart, so that your whole being shook and trembled; and why and why, why no one knew, it was the nature of man and of creation, that some sound, long remembered from the days of innocence before the world’s corruption, could open the door of the soul, flooding it with a sudden knowledge of the sadness and terror and beauty of man’s home and the earth. But you could not keep such knowledge, you could not hold it in your hand like a flower or a book, for it came and went like the wind; and the door of the soul would not stay open, for maybe it was too great joy and sorrow for a man, and meant only for angels. Yet you could ride again in the rain, in the piet-my-vrou’s season, and he would call again, and catch you again by the throat and make you tremble.

  Then the lieutenant was silent, exhausted by the rush of words, and a little constrained; and he said in an ordinary voice, as if to sum it all up and wipe it all out together, as though it were really something of no real account, that’s what a sound can do to you.

  — I had a sound too, said the young constable.

  His face and voice were eager, so the lieutenant had to overcome his constraint, seeing it was he himself who had made the young man eager.

  — You had a sound too?

  — Yes, said the young constable, when my mother used to open the big tin in the pantry.

  Then the lieutenant exploded with laughter, and looked to see if the young constable were hurt, but he was not hurt at all, for the lieutenant’s poetry and laughter were music alike to him.

  After they had visited the police post at Bremerspan, they left the road that runs south to Natal and Zululand, and turned to the east, by the rough track that goes down into the reserve which our forefathers gave to Maduna when he yielded to them, a hundred years ago. The track was steep in places, for the grass country falls down steeply into the low country.

  Here the black people lived their lives in a separate world, in the round grass huts with their small fields of maize and beans and sweet potatoes. Some say it would be better if they stayed there altogether, for then they would be protected against the evils of our civilisation; but the truth is they cannot stay there, for their small fields cannot keep them, and they must come out to work for food and clothes. They go in their thousands to Johannesburg and Durban, nearly all the men, and every young man and woman, and there learn many new things, so that some never come back, and some come back with new ideas never before thought of in the low country.

  Their old respect for the white people is passing away, and if the father put down his hat at the door before he came into your house, the son will hold it in his hand, causing some to say that the grandson will keep it on his head. But that I do not believe.

  Yet though this so-called separate world has so been changed by us, though the English missionaries are there with their school and hospital, though so many of its able-bodied men and so many of its young women are away, though the brave tribal dress gives way more and more to white people’s cast-off clothes, though Maduna’s great-great-grandson has a motor-car, yet it is a separate world all the same, and of its joys and sorrows no one knows at all.

  But the Police knew it well, not so much because it was lawless, but because they often found some person there who was being looked for by the Police in Johannesburg.

  The lieutenant reached this country at about noon, and leaving the car, made for the huts where the girl Stephanie was reported to keep her child, and there an old man, dressed in an old greatcoat, such as they wore in the army, came out at the sound of them.

  — More, my baas. More, my baas.

  — We are looking for the girl Stephanie, said the lieutenant.

  The old man looked down at his greatcoat and adjusted it, though there was no need to adjust it. Then he frowned as though compelling himself to great effort in the interests of law and justice.

  — Stephanie, he said, Stephanie.

  The lieutenant smiled, not purposely, but as one smiles at such acting, knowing it is acting, but enjoying it. And the man, seeing the smile and knowing its meaning, was at once in its power. But he shook his head with a kind of sorrow, and said, Stephanie. And the lieutenant, as if agreeing with him, said also, Stephanie. Then the old man spoke to the native constable in their own language.

  — I know this girl Stephan
ie, he said.

  And though the lieutenant knew this language, the native constable said to him in Afrikaans, he says he knows the girl Stephanie. So to humour the old man, the lieutenant said to the native constable in Afrikaans, where is she now?

  The two black men spoke again, and the native constable said in Afrikaans, he says she lives in the dorp. The lieutenant smiled again, and seeing him again, the old man was still more in his power, especially when the white man put the slight note of authority into his voice, and said, I am waiting.

  The two black men spoke again, and the native constable said, he says it is a difficult matter, but the lieutenant took no notice of him, but looked at some other place, to show that he was waiting.

  — He asks a favour.

  — Yes.

  — He asks you not to go straight to the place he will tell us, but to go first to some of the other huts. The lieutenant nodded, and he and the young constable walked away, one to one hut, and the other to another. Then the native constable walked to yet another, and when they met again, he told the lieutenant, not pointing but nodding his head, that the girl was in one of the kloofs in the hills, where they sloped steeply back into the grass country, and up to the farms of the white people. The kloof was wooded, not with forest, but with what we in South Africa call the bush, and trees grow there because the hills catch the wet winds from the distant sea.

  — He does not know if she is still there, said the native constable, for if you climb out at the top of it, you could go to many other places and not be seen. But she went there when she heard we were coming.

  — So she heard we were coming.

  — Yes, meneer.

  — You and Maseko go up the small kloof, said the lieutenant, and when I see you come out at the top, I’ll start up the big one.