Too Late the Phalarope

  The magistrate found her guilty for the liquor, and indeed she herself pleaded so, but he decided that there was no proof that she had meant to run away from Venterspan nor any proof that she did not mean to return. He gave her the usual two weeks, which she received as she received other things, not with resentment or sullenness, but with the smile and the frown, and with the strange innocence that made me pity her, though innocent she could hardly be.

  She was about to leave the court, and I thought that the magistrate had forgotten the matter of the child, but he suddenly held up his hand.

  — You have a child, he said.

  At the mention of the child, she was immediately another woman, and she looked round the court with wary eyes, as an animal might look round when it is hunted.

  Then she said, I have a child.

  — And you are always in prison?

  — Not always, she said.

  — How often have you been in prison?

  She tried to count the times, even using her fingers, and smiled and frowned, but at last shook her head and gave it up.

  — Many times?

  — Yes, many times.

  Then she said urgently, but not so many.

  The magistrate wrote it down, and then he read it out, not always, but many times, but not so many.

  She could see it was a jest, and that the magistrate and others were amused by it, and she looked round the court as if to be on guard the better. Then she saw that the magistrate was waiting, so she nodded her head, and looked again round the court.

  — And you do not work?

  — I cannot work, she said. The old woman is very old.

  — Would not some other woman watch her while you went to work?

  Yes, that is what they did, asked questions that grew harder and harder, leading you to a place where you could not escape.

  — Would that not be possible?

  — Yes.

  — Then I must warn you that unless you stop this idle life, the Government may take away your child.

  The smile was gone from her now. She looked at the magistrate unbelieving.

  —Dis my enigste kind, she said, it’s my only child.

  — But it does not even live with you.

  — There’s no place, she said earnestly. The house is small.

  — I am just warning you, said the magistrate. You may go.

  She did not smile any more. She left the dock and followed the policeman to the door, but halfway there she halted, as though she would not go, as though something must be done or be said, as though it were unbelievable that her offences, for which she had been willing to pay without complaint, should suddenly threaten her with such a consequence. She turned and looked at me and my nephew as though she would say something to us, but she knew that she could not do such a thing in a court.

  So then she went out.

  — It’s a lost creature, I said, that will go with any man that comes, but she has a passion for that child.

  I looked at him and he was grave and tender, and nodded his head. And because he was grave and tender, and because of my love for him, I dared to say to him what I would not otherwise have dared. But I put his mother’s name with it, so that if he were angry, he would not be so angry as that.

  — Perhaps even as your mother and I had a passion for a child.

  Then I turned away, so that if he were displeased, I should not see it. But he took my arm and led me out of the court.

  — You’re a foolish old woman, he said, but I get along with you.

  Outside the court he left me, and I turned to watch him walk down the street, the child that had grown into such a man.

  THE ROADS OF THE GRASS COUNTRY are full of dust on a Sunday morning, for all the people of the countryside are going to the great Church in van Onselen Street. They come in those big American cars, and cars not so big, and some by horse and trap, perhaps because they have no car, or perhaps like old Hendrik Meyer, because they have never quite felt it right to go with a car to church. You will see hundreds of cars outside the Church, and there is no dust there, because van Onselen Street was tarred to keep down the Sunday dust, and not for the comfort of Johannesburg people as some suppose. The whole white town and countryside is there, except for our few English-speaking people, and the Kaplan brothers, and those Afrikaners who belong to the Apostolics, which my brother says is no church at all; and there are even one or two Afrikaners that do not go at all, like Doctor Fouche, whether through disbelief or idleness I could not say, and him my brother would never have in our house, not even I believe if the English doctor were away and one of us was about to die. But such a habit, learned no doubt in Johannesburg and Cape Town and other godless places, is a hard habit to keep in Venterspan, for the lawyer de Villiers tried it, but now he comes like any one of us.

  And there is another Sunday traffic too, that travels the big road that runs north to Johannesburg and south to Natal and Zululand. They bang the doors in the stillness, and start up their cars at the service station with a great noise of engines that can be heard in the church, and is to some a cause of anger and affront. White women get out of the cars there, laughing and smoking, wearing black glasses as though they were afraid of God’s sun; and they wear trousers too, green and yellow and plum-coloured, such as no white woman should wear in a street, where all the black people watch to see what you wear and do. And I must confess, though I understand English and Jewish ways, that it is the yellow trousers that anger me most of all.

  And this day I write about now was a special day in the church, because the old dominee has just got a new assistant, young Dominee Vos, and this will be his first preaching today. They say he can speak like an angel, but Pieter says he plays rugby football like a man possessed, with a quick shift on the leg and a dummy pass that can deceive all but the best. And if that were not enough, they say he is handsome and clever, so that my niece Martha tells me that the girls who have already seen him on the street, think that if they married a predikant, it would be one like Dominee Vos.

  All the van Vlaanderens are there, my sister-in-law and my niece and I, but my brother is not with us, being busy with his elder’s duties here and there in the church. And in front of me I can see my nephew, dressed in a dark suit, and I tell myself he is the finest-looking man in all the church; and my sister-in-law looks at him too, with her look of love and care, and I know that her thought is the same as mine. And the quiet country girl Nella is there too, looking small and fair beside the big dark man. And I cannot help but smile to see that Japie is with them, and Japie is no great man for church, and got into careless ways in Pretoria; but now he will come every Sunday, because he is Social Welfare Officer now, and you could not have a Social Welfare Officer who did not go to church.

  I reckon that I have heard three thousand sermons, and could have heard five thousand, except that at Buitenverwagting we had to travel far, and went to church only in the mornings. But I reckon that old Mevrou Badenhorst, who is as old as the town itself and has lived there all her life, has heard every sermon of seven thousand, maybe eight; and she still comes morning and evening, for all her ninety years, and now so deaf she cannot hear a word.

  Then all the congregation stopped rustling and was still, so I turned myself to more fitting thoughts; but in any case I wanted to see what the new dominee was like.

  Before the young dominee preached, old Dominee Stander said a few words about him, telling us who he was, not forgetting the rugby football. I knew my nephew would be pleased, for though the young dominee was long after his own time at Stellenbosch, they had both played in the most famous fifteen in the country. The old man told the young one that he had come to a faithful and generous people, amongst whom he himself had lived these many years, and had received every gift of loyalty and affection, which gifts he trusted the young man would deserve and be given. Which things are true, because we loved the old man, he being a man of God, though my brother wishes he would smoke a pipe; I do not
mean he smokes cigarettes, he smokes nothing at all.

  Then the young dominee took his place, and stood there for a moment and said not a word, looking out over the great congregation of a thousand souls, quiet and not nervous, as though he were the old one and we the children, but giving no offence, because he did it quietly, and not like a man with any vain thought in his mind. He thanked the old dominee for his words, and gave out his text, which was about backsliders and backsliding, not those who backslid out of the church he said, but those who backslid inside it, crucifying the Lord anew, praising Him with their lips but denying Him the true praise of their hearts and lives. And he invited us to judge ourselves, because the Lord had called him to be a shepherd not a judge, and to ask ourselves if these things were true of us; whether we perhaps were held in honour of men and in the market place, but within were full of darkness. Was there a husband there who would wish the world to know what his wife knew about him? Or perhaps his wife to know what the world, or some stranger, knew about him? Or a son who would reveal himself to his father, or a father to his son? Or was there any soul there who would wish revealed to the world what he knew about himself? He did not judge, he said; that is why he said we were full of darkness, not deceit. For one deceit was to deceive for some base end, and the other deceit was to hide out of fear, and for this deceit no Christian could withhold his pity and his forgiveness, nor would God his mercy, if it were confessed. And this mercy was beyond all computation, abundant and healing, restoring, uplifting, and just.

  No, he had not come to preach only about backsliding and backsliders, but about repentance and mercy, that a man might turn again, taking his part again in God’s plan for the world, so that through a man, himself healed and refreshed, might flow a stream of living water to refresh us all, his home, his church, his town, his people, and the world.

  Then all at once the young dominee stopped preaching. You could see he was a bit excited, and he slapped his hand down hard on the wood of the pulpit.

  — That’s the sickness of our times, he said, that we are afraid to believe it any more. We think of ourselves as men in chains, in the prison of our natures and the world, able to do nothing, but having to suffer everything. God’s plan? Ah, that’s another thing that’s done to us, history, and war, and narrow parents, and poverty, and sickness, and sickness of soul, there’s nothing we can do but to suffer them.

  — It’s a lie, he said, and again he struck the wood with his hand. It’s the lie we tell to ourselves to hide the truth of our weakness and lack of faith. Is there not a gospel of God’s love, that God’s love can transform us, making us creators, not sufferers? I knew a man that counted the days, each day, every day, tearing them off on the little block that stood on his desk. He was always looking at his watch, and saying, it’s one o’clock or it’s four o’clock or it’s nine o’clock, as though it were something for satisfaction. When April went, he would say, April’s gone, and wait for May to go too. I never saw him on New Year’s Day, but I suppose he would have said, the Old Year’s gone; he was waiting for death, though he didn’t know it, because he was afraid of life, though he didn’t know that either.

  The young dominee’s voice rose.

  — I am come that ye might have life, and have it more abundantly, saith the Lord.

  He closed the great book and picked up his papers and came down out of the preaching seat. The great congregation stirred and rustled, and with a kind of sigh, because this boy could preach. Then they stood up and sang, and one or two of the women wiped their eyes, which my brother never likes, because he says that religion is a matter for obedience and not for tears. I watched him too, but I did not know what he thought, nor have I ever known what passed in that mind, except those times when without warning some power stronger than his own struck him in the heart, as it did on the day when the boy did not open the parcel of the stamps. Nor did he sing in any other way than he always sang, for his obedience was constant all his days, and was not to be suddenly made greater or less by the words of any man; and indeed there were only two kinds of words that could move him at all, and they were the words of the Book and of South Africa. But the rest of us sang more deeply and loudly, because of the boy that preached.

  OUTSIDE THE CHURCH we all met together, except my brother who had his duties, and Japie who was greeting all his friends. My nephew was holding a court, for his sister Martha clung on to his arm, and his ten-year-old nephew Koos, who was Frans’s son, could not take his eyes off him. It was a private joke with us, the admiration that Koos had for his father’s brother; but it was kept private, for Frans was I think a little jealous of his brother already, he himself never having been to the University, nor had he ever shone in the rugby field, nor had he ever seen a war. But it was known that Koos meant to go to Stellenbosch, and after that to be a policeman too; and his admiration was all the stranger, because he was a dark and solitary child.

  My sister-in-law was happy amongst her own people, as indeed she always was. She talked to Frans and his wife and their two other children, and to Henrietta’s quiet husband, who for her sake would consent to break his silent habit.

  Then she touched Nella’s cheek and said to her, you’re looking pale.

  The girl smiled, but she was no good at hiding, and I said to myself, there’s trouble in this house. For the smile went as it came, and left her strained, and I wished she could have been cleverer at hiding.

  Then my sister-in-law said, why don’t you take her to the coast, Pieter?

  He left his sister, and moved to the girl and took her arm, like a soldier going to duty. And she gave him a quick smile of thanks, and looked at him with love and then away, so that I knew that this trouble was no trouble of anger and words, but a thing more deep.

  — Two things, he said. No leave, and no money.

  — I know where you could get money, I said, from a rich woman, with no foolish pride.

  He grinned at me.

  — You and your money, he said.

  I shook my purse at him.

  — It’s real money, I said. It buys and it clinks.

  He smiled at his mother, but he was serious now.

  — I can’t go just now, he said. In any case, it’ll soon be the captain’s leave.

  — Why don’t you send her home, his mother said. For a week or two. Do it now, before Frikkie has to go to school.

  — I couldn’t, said Nella.

  But you could see that she could, if she were spoken to enough.

  — You must order her, said his mother.

  He smiled at them both.

  — She’s got a will, he said. Like your own. It doesn’t show, but it’s there.

  His mother said, with a smile that softened it, for a hard thing she never had said in her life, there’s only one will in our house.

  — Tante has a will, said Martha.

  — It’s like your mother’s, I said, it shows when it has to. I looked at her.

  — But not so gentle, I said.

  — That’s what living is, she explained to us all, all wills together, and each takes a turn to yield.

  Then my brother came out, and that was the end of the talk about wills. And the young dominee came out too, and we should have liked to speak with him, but there were many waiting for that; and we are a gentle family, that will wait patiently for its turn. My brother was full of jokes, and he pinched Nella’s cheek too, and said she looked like a bride, which will show you that he had strange eyes; but she brightened up at his praise, and looked like a bride after all.

  — You mustn’t stand about on your leg, said my sister-in-law.

  He growled at her.

  — Shall I stand on my head, he said. Daughter-in-law, are you all coming this afternoon?

  — Surely, she said.

  He pinched her cheek again.

  — Good, he said, I like one sensible woman in the house.

  Then we said goodbye to Frans and Henrietta and their families, promising to meet them
soon. I saw that my nephew was watching the young dominee, with some strange look in his eyes, and I guessed that the preaching had struck him in the heart, though I could not have told you why. Then the young dominee looked at him, and with the look in his eyes that so many young men had when they looked at Pieter van Vlaanderen, and in a moment he was with us, with his hand outstretched, and his eyes shining.

  — You’re Pieter van Vlaanderen, he said.

  And at the sight of the boy, with his eyes shining and his face all eager, I saw what I had seen before and could not understand, that the lights went out suddenly in the house of the soul, and its doors and windows were shut and its curtains were drawn, and the man stood there outside it in the dark, with cold and formal welcome, like one who keeps you on the stoep and makes his face into the fashion of a smile, and speaks all quietly and courteous, but you know he will not ask you in.

  Then he took the young dominee’s hand, and bowed stiffly as some foreigners bow, and said, welcome to Venterspan.

  But though I being a watcher saw these things, I was the only one. Now you cannot go to a man all shining and eager, and be bowed to stiff and cold, and not lose something of your eagerness; so the young dominee turned to my sister-in-law, and gave her a smile that would touch any woman in the world, and said, you’re his mother. And with great respect he said to my brother, whom he had met already in the church, I am sorry, meneer, I did not realise at first who you were. But what he was saying was really other words, he was really saying, I did not realise whose father you were. And my brother looked at him out of the heavy bearded face and said nothing at all, neither with his eyes nor tongue.

  Then the young dominee said to me, you’re Tante Sophie, and to my niece he said, you’re Martha. And we both were alive with pleasure, one like the girl she was, and one like the girl she had been. But his best smile of all he kept for Nella, as though he kept it of purpose to the last, and said to her, you’re Nella. So all the women lay at his feet, and the two men stood silent and constrained.