Matha and the SnakeZ

Yes, Roderick Guise was his name.

I remember the time he first came to live on this side of the Dwarsberge. He came in a donkey-cart and in the back, along with a pile of blankets and things, he had a thick bundle of white paper. We found out at once that he was a man who wrote animal stories. It wasn’t difficult for us to find this out, either. For that was the first thing he said to us when he stopped at Kris Lem­mer’s post office.

“I am Roderick Guise, kêrels,” he said. “I am the man who writes the animal stories in the Huisgenoot and the Boereweekblad and so on. I suppose you have all heard of me.”

I could see he was disappointed when we all said that we hadn’t heard of him. One man, Martinus Snyman, nearly brought the whole of Drogevlei into disgrace in front of a stranger by thinking that animal stories were stories written by animals. He had seen a horse once in a circus at Zeerust adding up figures, and he thought that perhaps the Englishman had also trained animals to write stories.

Martinus Snyman was easily the most ignorant man I had ever come across.

But afterwards we felt more intimate with this Roderick Guise. By that I mean that we felt less contempt for him. That was after we had found out that Guise was perhaps the Johannesburg way of saying Gous. And at that time Koos Gous was in gaol for smuggling cattle over the Bechuanaland border. So we forgave Rode­rick Guise for a lot of his nonsense because he had the same name as the biggest cattle-smuggler in the Marico.

Later on, whenever he found two or three of us together, Ro­derick Guise would take a roll of papers out of his pocket and read us some of his stories. There was one story about a jackal and another one about a lion and quite a few about snakes – mostly rinkhalses and mambas.

What he wrote was all silly stuff. I mean, it might have been true enough for animals that you read about in other countries. Animals like polar bears and whales. But I know that any sensible South African animals would laugh at the nonsense Roderick Guise wrote about what he called Wild Life.

For instance, Guise wrote one story about a leopard chasing him for half a mile across the veld. Now, you know as well as I do that no leopard has ever yet chased a white man, except for fun. And I am sure that particular leopard only chased Roderick so that he could have a story written about him. We, who understand animals, know how vain they can be in that way. And it is just little things like this that people who write about Wild Life will never believe.

But I am sorry that that leopard chased Roderick Guise for only half a mile. While he felt in that playful mood, he should have chased him right out of the Marico District.

One day, when we were sitting in Kris Lemmer’s dining room, waiting for the post-cart to bring the letters, a little kaffir-boy came running into the house, shouting that there was a mamba in the Government Road. Lemmer laughed and said that it must be a mamba that had got loose out of one of Roderick Guise’s stories.

But we went to have a look.

It was a mamba, all right. When we got into the road we were just in time to see that last few feet of the snake’s tail disappearing in the yellow grass.

Kris said that the mamba had come from the direction of the kraal. He suspected that this snake was in the habit of milking one of his cows. Of course, we all know that certain snakes have the habit of getting friendly with a cow and draining her milk. So we told him that was the best way of lying in wait for the snake. Then the post-cart came and we forgot all about it.

Only, I am mentioning this thing about the snake now, because of what happened afterwards. You’ll see then that this is a strange story. People who don’t know the Marico won’t believe this, I suppose. But then, they don’t matter. There are always persons like Roderick Guise who tell them lies that they can believe. But I have told you that this is a strange story.

When the predikant came here some years ago, and the ouderling took him aside and told him the whole thing on behalf of the Dwarsberg congregation – for we all decided that it wasn’t right for the predikant to hold Nagmaal unless he knew everything – then the predikant turned very pale and trembled a little, and said that the Evil Spirit knows what to make of it.

What we did know was that when he got on to the post-cart, Roderick Guise, the man who wrote animal stories and the man who had vaunted his powers in a cheap and silly way, was the most pitiful spectacle in the whole of the Marico District.

We were all pleased that the arrogance had been taken out of Roderick Guise, and in that way we felt grateful to Martha. By whatever means she had set about making Roderick look the poor creature he really was, she had succeeded remarkably well.

We remembered that in addition to her madness there was another ugly thing about Martha. And that was about the way her mother had died. We wondered how much there was about this that Roderick Guise knew. But, of course, it was useless trying to ask him. He was not in a fit state to talk about that or about anything else. I wonder if he has ever been able to talk again.

Afterwards the kaffirs told us that the Mad White Missus had had a baby. We were surprised about this, in a way. Somehow, from the stories that had grown up around Martha, it did not seem natural to think of her and a baby. In a way, that was about the most terrible thing we had heard about her, so far. You know what I mean. The thought of her baby actually seemed a lot more frightening than her madness, even. We felt that we really had to do something about this.

Then, one morning, a kaffir told us that the baby had died. He didn’t know for sure what it had died of, but he believed it was from a snakebite. We all agreed that it was absurd to imagine that a snake would bite a baby that was only a few days old.

It was then that the veldkornet decided that we had to take action.

“This is where the law comes in,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what else Martha does. But if she has murdered her child the law must have its way.”

We agreed with the veldkornet that it was his duty to go over to Martha’s farm and make enquiries about the baby’s death. But we also made it clear to him that we considered it was his duty to go alone. We could see what he hinted at. He meant that three or four of us should volunteer to go with him. But if he was veldkor­net, he should also carry out the duties that went with it, and not drag other people into his affairs.

“If you won’t come with me willingly,” the veldkornet said, “I shall have to commandeer you.”

Accordingly he commandeered four men to go with him. We cleaned and loaded our rifles and early the next morning the five of us set off on horseback. I am sure I never felt more uncomfortable in all my life than I did that morning. And I have been right through the Boer War and I fought with De Wet at Sanna’s Post. Yet all those things seemed like nothing at all compared with the heavy feeling I had in my stomach that morning when the five of us were riding down the road together.

By their silence and the expressions on their faces, I could see that my companions felt the same.

Anyway, I’ll say no more about this part of the affair, except that we rode twice round the farmyard before going in and we could have gone round a third time if the veldkornet didn’t slip off his horse sideways, so that he had to dismount completely to save face. Of course, he said afterwards that he had intended getting off there, anyway, and he had just slipped like that on purpose to dismount more quickly.

Piet Steyn gasped at what we saw then. On the table by the side of the house, in the shade of a big camel-thorn tree, lay the body of a naked baby. I remember the queer, frightened way in which all five of us took off our hats. It must have looked strange to a stranger passing by then to see five armed burghers standing hat in hand and afraid to talk in front of a madwoman’s dead baby.

But, of course, nobody could tell from its looks that the mother was mad. It looked just like an ordinary baby, and rather pretty, I thought. And there was no doubt as to how it had died. We had all seen the effects of a mamba’s bite and we knew.

The veldkornet whispered to us to return.

And we were on the point of going back as noiselessly as we had come, when a queer kind of curiosity made us look through the window. It was what we saw then that made the predikant pray fervently when we told him about it.

What we saw then made us understand a great deal more about what the Bible says of Evil and Sin.

On the bed in front of the window the madwoman Martha was lying. She was awake. Her eyes stared at the ceiling. A long brown mamba lay on her bosom. In what looked like a sweet and soft and very tender way, Martha’s hand stroked the head of the snake.