The Missionary

That kaffir carving on the wall of my voorkamer (Oom Schalk Lourens said), it’s been there for many years. It was found in the loft of the pastorie at Ramoutsa after the death of the Dutch Reformed missionary there, Reverend Keet.

To look at, it’s just one of those figures that a kaffir wood-carver cuts out of soft wood, like mdubu or mesetla. But because I knew him quite well, I can still see a rough sort of resemblance to Reverend Keet in that carving, even though it is now discoloured with age and the white ants have eaten away parts of it. I first saw this figure in the study of the pastorie at Ramoutsa when I went to call on Reverend Keet. And when, after his death, the carving was found in the loft of the pastorie, I brought it here. I kept it in memory of a man who had strange ideas about what he was pleased to call Darkest Africa.

Reverend Keet had not been at Ramoutsa very long. Before that he had worked at a mission station in the Cape. But, as he told us, ever since he had paid a visit to the Marico District, some years before, he had wanted to come to the Western Transvaal. He said he had obtained, in the Bushveld along the Molopo River, a feeling that here was the real Africa. He said there was a spirit of evil in these parts that he believed it was his mission to overcome.

We who had lived in the Marico for the greater part of our lives wondered what we had done to him.

On his previous visit here Reverend Keet had stayed long enough to meet Elsiba Grobler, the daughter of Thys Grobler of Drogedal. Afterwards he had sent for Elsiba to come down to the Cape to be his bride.

And so we thought that the missionary had remembered with affection the scenes that were the setting for his courtship. And that was why he came back here. So you can imagine how disappointed we were in learning the truth.

Nevertheless, I found it interesting to listen to him, just because he had such outlandish views. And so I called on him quite regularly when I passed the mission station on my way back from the Indian store at Ramoutsa.

Reverend Keet and I used to sit in his study, where the curtains were half drawn, as they were in the whole pastorie. I supposed it was to keep out the bright sunshine that Darkest Africa is so full of.

“Only yesterday a kaffir child hurt his leg falling out of a wit­haak tree,” Reverend Keet said to me on one occasion. “And the parents didn’t bring the child here so that Elsiba or I could bandage him up. Instead, they said there was a devil in the withaak. And so they got the witch-doctor to fasten a piece of crocodile skin to the child’s leg, to drive away the devil.”

So I said that that just showed you how ignorant a kaffir was. They should have fastened the crocodile skin to the withaak, in­stead, like the old people used to do. That would drive the devil away quick enough, I said.

Reverend Keet did not answer. He just shook his head and looked at me in a pitying sort of way, so that I felt sorry I had spoken.

To change the subject I pointed to a kaffir wood-carving standing on a table in the corner of the study. That same wood-carving you see today hanging on the wall of my voorkamer.

“Here’s now something that we want to encourage,” Reverend Keet said in answer to my question. “Through art we can perhaps bring enlightenment to these parts. The kaffirs here seem to have a natural talent for wood-carving. I have asked Willem Terre­blanche to write to the Education Department for a text-book on the subject. It will be another craft that we can teach to the children at the school.”

Willem Terreblanche was the assistant teacher at the mission station.

“Anyway, it will be more useful than that last text-book we got on how to make paper serviettes with tassels,” Reverend Keet went on, half to himself. Then it was as though an idea struck him. “Oh, by the way,” he asked, “would you perhaps like, say, a few dozen paper serviettes with tassels to take home with you?”

I declined his offer in some haste.

Reverend Keet started talking about that carving again.

“You wouldn’t think it was meant for me, now, would you?” he asked.

And because I am always polite, that way, I said no, certainly not.

“I mean, just look at the top of my body,” he said. “It’s like a sack of potatoes. Does the top part of my body look like a sack of potatoes?”

And once again I said no, oh no.

Reverend Keet laughed, then – rather loudly I thought – at the idea of the wood-carver’s ignorance. I laughed quite loudly, also, to make it clear that I, too, thought that the kaffir wood-carver was very ignorant.

“All the same, for a raw kaffir who has had no training,” the missionary continued, “it’s not bad. But take that self-satisfied sort of smile, now, that he put on my face. It only came out that way because the kaffir who made the carving lacks the skill to carve my features as they really are. He hasn’t got technique.”

I thought, well, maybe that ignorant Bechuana didn’t know any more what technique was than I did. But I did think he had a pretty shrewd idea how to carve a wooden figure of Reverend Keet.

“If a kaffir had the impudence to make a likeness like that of me, with such big ears and all,” I said to Reverend Keet, “I would kick him in the ribs. I would kick him for being so ignorant, I mean.”

It was then that Elsiba brought us in our coffee. Although she was now the missionary’s wife, I still thought of her as Elsiba, a Bushveld girl whom I had seen grow up.

“You’ve still got that thing there,” Elsiba said to her husband, after she had greeted me. “I won’t have you making a fool of yourself. Every visitor to the pastorie who sees this carving goes away laughing at you.”

“They laugh at the kaffir who made it, Elsiba, because of his poor technique,” Reverend Keet said, drawing himself up in his chair.

“Anyway, I’m taking it out of here,” Elsiba answered.

I have since then often thought of that scene. Of the way Elsiba Keet walked from the room, with the carving standing upright on the tray that she had carried the coffee-cups on. Because of its big feet that wooden figure did not fall over when Elsiba flounced out with the tray. And in its stiff, wooden bearing the figure seemed to be expressing the same disdain of the kaffir wood-carver’s technique as what Reverend Keet had.

I remained in the study a long time. And all the while the missionary talked of the spirit of evil that hung over the Marico like a heavy blanket. It was something brooding and oppressive, he said, and it did something to the souls of men. He asked me whether I hadn’t noticed it myself.

So I told him that I had. I said that he had taken the very words out of my mouth. And I proceeded to tell him about the time Jurie Bekker had impounded some of my cattle that he claimed had strayed into his mealie-lands.

“You should have seen Jurie Bekker the morning that he drove off my cattle along the Government Road,” I said. “An evil blanket hung over him, all right. You could almost see it. A striped kaffir blanket.”

I also told the missionary about the sinful way in which Ni­k­laas Prinsloo had filled in those compensation forms for losses which he had never suffered, even. And about the time Gert Haasbroek sold me what he said was a pedigree Afrikaner bull, and that was just an animal he had smuggled through from the Protectorate one night, with a whole herd of other beasts, and that died afterwards of grass-belly.

I said that the whole of the Marico District was just bristling with evil, and I could give him many more examples, if he would care to listen.

But Reverend Keet said that was not what he meant. He said he was talking of the unnatural influences that hovered over this part of the country. He had felt those things particularly at the swamps by the Molopo, he said, with the green bubbles coming up out of the mud and with those trees that were like shapes oppressing your mind when it is fevered. But it was like that everywhere in the Bushveld, he said. With the sun pouring down at midday, for instance, and the whole veld very still, it was yet as though there was a high black wind, somewhere, an old lost wind. And he felt a chill in all his bones, he said, and it was something unearthly.

It was interesting for me to hear the Reverend Keet talk like that. I had heard the same sort of thing before from strangers. I wondered what he could take for it.

“Even here in this study, where I am sitting talking to you,” he added, “I can sense a baleful influence. It is some form of – of something skulking, somehow.”

I knew, of course, that Reverend Keet was not making any underhanded allusion to my being there in his study. He was too religious to do a thing like that. Nevertheless, I felt uncomfortable. Shortly afterwards I left.

On my way back in the mule-cart I passed the mission school. And I thought then that it was funny that Elsiba was so concerned that a kaffir should not make a fool of her husband with a wood-carving of him. Because she did not seem to mind making a fool of him in another way. From the mule-cart I saw Elsiba and Wil­lem Terreblanche in the doorway of the schoolroom. And from the way they were holding hands I could see that they were not discussing paper serviettes with tassels, or any similar school subjects.

Still, as it turned out, it never came to any scandal in the district. For Willem Terreblanche left some time later to take up a teaching post in the Free State. And after Reverend Keet’s death Elsiba allowed a respectable interval to elapse before she went to the Free State to marry Willem Terreblanche.

Some distance beyond the mission school I came across the Ramoutsa witch-doctor that Reverend Keet had spoken about. The witch-doctor was busy digging up roots on the veld for medi­cine. I reined in the mules and the witch-doctor came up to me. He had on a pair of brown leggings and a woman’s corset. And he carried an umbrella. Around his neck he wore a few feet of light-green tree-snake that didn’t look as though it had been dead very long. I could see that the witch-doctor was particular about how he dressed when he went out.

I spoke to him in Sechuana about Reverend Keet. I told him that Reverend Keet said the Marico was a bad place. I also told him that the missionary did not believe in the cure of fastening a piece of crocodile skin to the leg of a child who had fallen out of a withaak tree. And I said that he did not seem to think, either, that if you fastened crocodile skin to the withaak it would drive the devil out of it.

The witch-doctor stood thinking for some while. And when he spoke again it seemed to me that in his answer there was a measure of wisdom.

“The best thing,” he said, “would be to fasten a piece of crocodile skin on to the baas missionary.”

It seemed quite possible that the devils were not all just in the Marico Bushveld. There might be one or two inside Reverend Keet himself, also.

Nevertheless, I have often since then thought of how almost in­spired Reverend Keet was when he said that there was evil going on around him, right here in the Marico. In his very home – he could have said. With the curtains half drawn and all. Only, of course, he didn’t mean it that way.

Yet I have also wondered if, in the way he did mean it – when he spoke of those darker things that he claimed were at work in Africa – I wonder if there, too, Reverend Keet was as wide of the mark as one might lightly suppose.

That thought first occurred to me after Reverend Keet’s death and Elsiba’s departure. In fact, it was when the new missionary took over the pastorie at Ramoutsa and this wood-carving was found in the loft.

But before I hung up the carving where you see it now, I first took the trouble to pluck off the lock of Reverend Keet’s hair that had been glued to it. And I also plucked out the nails that had been driven – by Elsiba’s hands, I could not but think – into the head and heart.