Marico Scandal

When I passed young Gawie Erasmus by the wall of the new dam (Oom Schalk Lourens said) I could see clearly that he had had another disagreement with his employer, Koos Deventer. Because, as Gawie walked away from me, I saw, on the seat of his trousers, the still damp imprint of a muddy boot. The dried mud of another footprint, higher up on his trousers, told of a similar disagreement that Gawie had had with his employer on the previous day. I thought that Gawie must be a high-spirited young man to disagree so frequently with his employer.

Nevertheless, I felt it my duty to speak to Koos Deventer about this matter when I sat with him in his voorkamer, drinking coffee.

“I see that Gawie Erasmus still lays the stones unevenly on the wall of the new dam you are building,” I said to Koos Deventer.

“Indeed,” Koos answered, “have you been looking at the front part of the wall?”

“No,” I said, “I have been looking at Gawie’s trousers. The back part of the trousers.”

“The trouble with Gawie Erasmus,” Koos said, “is that he is not really a white man. It doesn’t show in his hair or his fingernails, of course. He is not as coloured as all that. But you can tell it easily in other ways. Yes, that is what’s wrong with Gawie. His Hottentot forebears.”

At that moment Koos Deventer’s eldest daughter, Francina, brought us in more coffee.

“It is not true, father, what you said about Gawie Erasmus,” Francina said. “Gawie is white. He is as white as I am.”

Francina was eighteen. She was tall and slender. She had a neat figure. And she looked very pretty in that voorkamer, with the yellow hair falling on to her cheeks from underneath a blue ribbon. Another thing I noticed about Francina, as she moved daintily towards me with the tray, was the scent that she bought in Zeerust at the last Nagmaal. The perfume lay on her strangely, like the night.

Koos Deventer made no reply to Francina. And only after she had gone back into the kitchen, and the door was closed, did he return to the subject of Gawie Erasmus.

“He is so coloured,” Koos said, “that he even sleeps with a blanket over his head, like a kaffir does.”

It struck me that Koos Deventer’s statements were rather peculiar. For, according to Koos, you couldn’t tell that Gawie Erasmus was coloured, just by looking at his hair and fingernails. You had to wait until Gawie lay underneath a blanket, so that you saw nothing of him at all.

But I remembered the way that Francina had walked out of the voorkamer with her head very high and her red lips closed. And it seemed to me, then, that Gawie’s disagreements with his em­ployer were not all due to the unevenness of the wall of the new dam. I did not see Gawie Erasmus again until the meeting of the Drogevlei Debating Society.

But in the meantime the story that Gawie was coloured gained much ground. Paulus Welman said that he knew a man once in Vryburg who had known Gawie’s grandfather. And this man said that Gawie’s grandfather had a big belly and wore a copper ring through his nose. At other times, again, Paulus Welman said that it was Gawie’s father whom this man in Vryburg had known, and that Gawie’s father did not wear the copper ring in his nose, but in his one ear. It was hard to know which story to believe. So most of the farmers in the Marico believed both.

The meeting of the Drogevlei Debating Society was held in the schoolroom. There was a good attendance. For the debate was to be on the Native Question. And that was always a popular subject in the Marico. You could say much about it without having to think hard.

I was standing under the thorn-trees talking to Paulus Welman and some others, when Koos Deventer arrived with his wife and Francina and Gawie. They got off the mule-cart, and the two women walked on towards the schoolroom. Koos and Gawie stayed behind, hitching the reins on to a tree. Several of the men with me shook their heads gravely at what they saw. For Gawie, while stooping for a riem, had another hurried disagreement with his employer.

Francina, walking with her mother towards the school, sensed that something was amiss. But when she turned round she was too late to see anything.

Francina and her mother greeted us as they passed. Paulus Wel­man said that Francina was a pretty girl, but rather stand-offish. He said her understanding was a bit slow, too. He said that when he had told her that joke about the copper ring in the one ear of Gawie’s father, Francina looked at him as though he had said there was a copper ring in his own ear. She didn’t seem to be quite all there, Paulus Welman said.

But I didn’t take much notice of Paulus.

I stood there, under the thorn-tree, where Francina had passed, and I breathed in stray breaths of that scent which Francina had bought in Zeerust. It was a sweet and strange fragrance. But it was sad, also, like youth that has gone.

I waited in the shadows. Gawie Erasmus came by. I scrutinised him carefully, but except that his hair was black and his skin rather dark, there seemed to be no justification for Koos Deventer to say that he was coloured. It looked like some kind of joke that Koos Deventer and Paulus Welman had got up between them. Gawie seemed to be just an ordinary and rather good-looking youth of about twenty.

By this time it was dark. Oupa van Tonder, an old farmer who was very keen on debates, lit an oil-lamp that he had brought with him and put it on the table.

The schoolmaster took the chair, as usual. He said that, as we all knew, the subject was that the Bantu should be allowed to develop along his own lines. He said he had got the idea for this debate from an article he had read in the Kerkbode.

Oupa van Tonder then got up and said that, the way the school­master put it, the subject was too hard to understand. He proposed, for the sake of the older debaters, who had not gone to school much, that they should just be allowed to talk about how the kaffirs in the Marico were getting cheekier every day. The older debaters cheered Oupa van Tonder for putting the schoolmaster in his place.

Oupa van Tonder was still talking when the schoolmaster bang­ed the table with a ruler and said that he was out of order. Oupa van Tonder got really annoyed then. He said he had lived in the Transvaal for eighty-eight years, and this was the first time in his life that he had been insulted. “Anybody would think that I am the steam machine that threshes the mealies at Nietverdiend, that I can get out of order,” Oupa van Tonder said.

Some of the men started pulling Oupa van Tonder by his jacket to get him to sit down, but others shouted out that he was quite right, and that they should pull the schoolmaster’s jacket instead.

The schoolmaster explained that if some people were talking on the Kerkbode subject, and others were talking on Oupa van Tonder’s subject, it would mean that there were two different debates going on at the same time. Oupa van Tonder said that that was quite all right. It suited him, he said. And he told a long story about a kaffir who had stolen his trek-chain. He also said that if the schoolmaster kept on banging the table like that, while he was talking, he would go home and take his oil-lamp with him.

In the end the schoolmaster said that we could talk about anything we liked. Only, he asked us not to use any of that coarse language that had spoilt the last three debates. “Try to remember that there are ladies present,” he said in a weak sort of way.

The older debaters, who had not been to school much, spoke at great length.

Afterwards the schoolmaster suggested that perhaps some of our younger members would like to debate a little, and he called on Gawie Erasmus to say a few words on behalf of the kaffirs. The schoolmaster spoke playfully.

Koos Deventer guffawed behind his hand. Some of the women tittered. On account of his unpopularity the schoolmaster heard little of what went on in the Marico. The only news he got was what he could glean from reading the compositions of the children in the higher classes. And we could see that the children had not yet mentioned, in their compositions, that Gawie Erasmus was supposed to be coloured.

You know how it is with a scandalous story. The last one to hear it is always that person that the scandal is about.

That crowd in the schoolroom realised quickly what the situation was. And there was much laughter all the time that Gawie spoke. I can still remember that half-perplexed look on his dark face, as though he had meant to make a funny speech, but had not expected quite that amount of appreciation. And I noticed that Francina’s face was very red, and that her eyes were fixed steadily on the floor.

There was so much laughter, finally, that Gawie had to sit down, still looking slightly puzzled.

After that Paulus Welman got up and told funny stories about so-called white people whose grandfathers had big bellies and wore copper rings in their ears. I don’t know at what stage of the debate Gawie Erasmus found out at whom these funny remarks were being directed. Or when it was that he slipped out of the schoolroom, to leave Drogevlei and the Groot Marico for ever.

And some months later, when I again went to visit Koos De­venter, he did not once mention Gawie Erasmus to me. He seemed to have grown tired of Marico scandals. But when Fran­cina brought in the coffee, it was as though she thought that Koos had again spoken about Gawie. For she looked at him in a disapproving sort of way and said: “Gawie is white, father. He is as white as I am.”

I could not at first make out what the change was that had come over Francina. She was as good-looking as ever, but in a different sort of way. I began to think that perhaps it was because she no longer wore that strange perfume that she bought in Zeerust.

But at that moment she brought me my coffee.

And I saw then, when she came towards me from behind the table, with the tray, why it was that Francina Deventer moved so heavily.