Visitors to Platrand

When Koenrad Wium rode back to his farm at Platrand, in the evening, with fever in his body and blood on his face (Oom Schalk Lourens said), nobody could guess about the sombre thing that was in his heart.

It was easy to guess about the fever, though. For, that night, when he lay on his bed, and the moon shone in through the window, Lettie Wium, his sister, had to shut out the moonlight with a curtain, because of the way that Koenrad kept on trying to rise from the bed in order to blow out the moon.

Koenrad Wium had gone off with Frik Engelbrecht into the Protectorate. They took with them rolls of tobacco and strings of coloured beads, which they were going to barter with the kaffirs for cattle. When he packed his last box of coloured beads on the wagon, Koenrad Wium told me that he and Frik Engelbrecht ex­pected to be away a long time. And I said I supposed they would. That was after I had seen some of the beads.

I knew, then, that Koenrad Wium and Frik Engelbrecht would have to go into the furthest parts of the Protectorate, where only the more ignorant kind of kaffirs are.

Koenrad was very enthusiastic when they set out. But I could see that Frik Engelbrecht was less keen. Frik was courting Koen­rad’s sister, Lettie. And Lettie’s looks were not of the sort that would make a man regard a box of beads as a good enough ex­cuse for departing on a long journey out of the Marico. I felt that his chief reason for going was that he wanted to oblige his future brother-in-law. And this was quite a strange reason.

“The only trouble,” Koenrad said, “is that when I get back I’ll have to go and live in a bigger district than the Marico. Otherwise I won’t have enough space for all my cattle to move about in. The Dwarsberge take up too much room.”

But Frik Engelbrecht did not laugh at Koenrad’s joke. He only looked sullen.

And I still remember what Lettie answered, when her brother asked her what she would like him to give her for a wedding present, when he had made all that money.

“I would like,” Lettie said, after thinking for a few mo­ments, “some beads.”

It was singular, therefore, that when Koenrad came back it was without the cattle. And without Frik Engelbrecht. And without the beads.

And he said strange things with the fever on him. He was sick for a long while. And with wasted cheeks, and a hollow look about his eyes, and his forehead bandaged with a white rag, Koenrad Wium lay in bed and talked mad words in his delirium. Con­sequently, on the days that the lorry from Zeerust came to the post office, there was not the usual crowd of Bushveld farmers discussing the crops and politics. They did not come to the post office anymore: they went, instead, to the farmhouse at Platrand, where they smoked and drank coffee in the bedroom, and listened to Koenrad’s babblings.

When the ouderling got to hear about these goings-on, he said it was very scandalous. He said it was a sad thing for the Dopper Church that some of its members could derive amusement from listening to the ravings of a delirious man. The ouderling had a keen sense of duty, and he was not content with merely reprimanding those of his neighbours whom he happened to meet casually. He went straight up to Koenrad’s house in Platrand, right into the bedroom, where he found a lot of men sitting around the wall; they were smoking their pipes and occasionally winking at one another.

The ouderling remained there for several hours.

He sat very stiffly on a chair near the bed. He glared a good deal at the farmers to show how much he despised them for being so low. And I noticed that the only time his arms were not folded tightly across his chest was when he had one hand up to his ear, owing to the habit that Koen­rad had, some­times, of mumbling. The ouderling was a bit deaf.

And all this time Lettie would pass in and out of the room, silently. She greeted us when we came, and brought us coffee, and said goodbye to us again when we left. But it was hard to gather just exactly what Lettie thought of the daily visits of ours. For she said so little. Just those cool words when we left. And those words, when we came, that we noticed were cooler.

In fact, during the whole period of Koenrad’s illness, she spoke on only one other occasion. That was on the third day the ouderling called. And it was to me that she spoke, then.

“I think, Oom Schalk, it is bad for my brother,” Lettie said, “if you sit right on top of him, like that. If you can’t hear too well what he is saying, you can bend your ear over with your hand, like the ouderling does.”

It was hard to follow the drift of Koenrad’s remarks. For he kept on bringing in things that he did as a boy. He spoke very much about his childhood days. He told us quite instructive things, too. For instance, we never knew, until then, that Koen­rad’s father stole. Several times he spoke about his father, and each time he ended up by saying, in a thin sort of voice: “No, father, you must not steal so much. It is not right.” He would also say: “You may laugh now, father. But one day you will not laugh.”

It was on these occasions that we would look at one another and wink. Sometimes Lettie would come into the room while Koenrad was saying these things about their father. But you could not tell by her face that she heard. There was just that calm and distant look in her eyes.

But we listened most attentively when Koenrad spoke about his trek into the Protectorate with Frik Engelbrecht. He said awful things about thirst and sin and fever, and we held our breath in fear that we should miss a word. It gave me a queer sort of feeling, more than once, to be sitting in that room of sickness, looking at a man with wasted cheeks, whose cracked lips were mumbling dark words. And in the midst of these frightening things he would suddenly talk about little red flowers that lay on the grass. He spoke about the foot of a hill where shadows were. And about small red flowers on the grass. He spoke as though these flowers were the most dreadful part of the story.

It was always at this stage that the argument started amongst the men sitting in the room.

Piet Snyman said it was all nonsense, the first time that Koenrad mentioned the flowers. Piet said that he had never seen any red flowers in the Protectorate, and he had been there often.

Stephanus Naudé agreed with him, and said that Koenrad was just trying to be funny with us, now, and was wasting our time. He said he didn’t get up early every morning and ride sixteen miles to hear Koenrad Wium discuss flowers. Piet Snyman sympathised with Stephanus Naudé, and said that he himself had almost as far to ride. “While Koenrad tells us about himself and Engelbrecht, or about his father’s dishonesty, we can listen to him,” Piet added.

The ouderling held up his hand.

“Broeders,” he said. “Let us not judge Koenrad Wium too harshly. Maybe he already had the fever, then, when he thought he saw the red flowers.”

Piet Snyman said that was all very well, but then why couldn’t Koen­rad tell us so, straight out? “After all, we are his guests,” Piet ex­plained. “We sit here and drink his coffee, and then he tries to be funny.”

There was much that was reasonable in what Piet Snyman said.

We said that Koenrad was not being honest with us, and that it looked as though he had inherited that dishonesty from his father. We said, further, that he wasn’t grateful for the trouble we were taking over him. He seemed to forget that it didn’t happen to just any sick person to have half the able-bodied men in the Marico watching at his bedside. Practically day and night, you could say. And sitting as near the bed as Lettie would allow us.

Gradually Koenrad began to get better.

But before that happened a kaffir brought a message to us from the man in charge of the Drogevlei post office. The man wanted to know if we would like to have our letters re-addressed to Koenrad Wium’s house at Platrand. We realised that it was a sarcastic message, and when we pointed this out to the ouderling, he went to the back of the house and kicked the kaffir for bringing it.

Koenrad’s recovery was slow. But when he regained con­scious­ness he did not talk much. Furthermore, he seemed to have no recollection of the things he had said in his days of delirium. He seemed to remember nothing of his mumblings about his boyhood, and about Engelbrecht and the Bechuanaland Protectorate. And although the ouderling questioned him, subtly, when Lettie was in the kitchen and the bedroom door was closed, there was not much that we could learn from his replies.

“Take your father, for instance,” the ouderling said – and we looked significantly at one another – “can you remember him in the old days, when you were living in the Cape?”

“Yes,” Koenrad answered.

“And did they ever – I mean,” the ouderling corrected himself, “did your father ever go away from the house for, say, six months?”

“No,” Koenrad replied.

“Twelve months, then?”

“No,” Koenrad said.

“Did you ever see him walking about,” the ouderling asked, “with a red handkerchief fastened over the lower part of his face?” We could see, from this question, that the ouderling had more exciting ideas than we had about the sort of things that a thief does.

“No,” Koenrad said again, looking surprised.

All Koenrad’s replies were like that – unsatisfactory. Still, it wasn’t the ouderling’s fault. We knew that the ouderling had done his best. Piet Snyman’s methods, however, were not the same as the ouderling’s. His words were not so well thought out.

“You don’t seem to remember much about your father – huh?” Piet Snyman said. “But what about all those small red flowers lying around on the grass?”

The change that came over Koenrad Wium’s face at this question was astonishing. But he didn’t answer. Instead, he drew the blanket over his head and lay very still. Piet Snyman was still trying to pull the blanket off his face, again, when Lettie walked into the bedroom.

“Your brother has had a relapse,” the ouderling said to Lettie.

Lettie looked at the ouderling without speaking. She picked up the quinine bottle and knelt at Koenrad’s bedside.

Koenrad relapsed quite often after that, when Lettie was in the kitchen. He relapsed four times over questions that the ouderling asked him, and seven times over things that Piet Snyman wanted to know. It was noticeable that Koenrad’s condition did not im­prove very fast.

Nevertheless, his periods of delirium grew fewer, and the number of his visitors dwindled. Towards the end only the ou­derling and I were left. And we began discussing, cautiously, the mystery of Frik Engelbrecht’s disappearance.

“It’s funny about those red flowers on the grass,” the ouderling said in a whisper, when Koenrad was asleep. “I wonder if he meant that there was blood on the grass?”

We also said that Lettie seemed to be acting strangely, and I said I wondered how she felt about the fact that her lover had not returned.

“Perhaps she has already got her eye on some other man,” the ouderling said, and he pushed out his chest and stroked his beard. “Perhaps what she wants now is an older man, with more understanding. A man who has been married before.”

The ouderling was a widower.

I thought he was talking very foolishly. For it was easy to see – from the look of patient dignity that passed over her face whenever she glanced at me – that Lettie preferred the kind of man that I was.

Then, one day, when Koenrad Wium was well enough to be able to move about the room, two men came for him. One wore a policeman’s uniform. The other was in plain clothes, and walked with a brisk step. And Lettie opened the door for them and led them into the bedroom, very calmly, as though she had been expecting them.