# The Little Karoo/Chapter 1

​I: The Pain
ALL their married, childless life of nearly fifty years Juriaan van Royen and his wife Deltje had lived in the Aangenaam valley in lands that he hired from Mijnheer van der Wenter of Vergelegen.
His lands lay an hour by foot from the Vergelegen homestead, on a little plateau on the mountain-side facing the north and the sun. The soil was poor and thin, and of all the poor men working hired lands in the Aangenaam valley Juriaan was one of the poorest. He was a tall, thin, loosely built man, slow and quiet in his speech, and slow and quiet in his movements. His lanky dust-coloured hair, fading with age instead of turning grey, and worn long like a Tak-Haar Boer’s from the Transvaal, gave him a wild and unkempt look that seemed but to accen​tuate his gentleness of heart. For his wife Deltje his tenderness had increased with age, and, lately, with her pain. The little old woman, plump and round, with skin as soft and smooth as a child’s, and a quiet, never-failing cheerfulness of spirit in spite of her pain, was dearer to him now than she had been as his bride. As his bride she had come to him up in the mountains from the harsh service of Mevrouw du Toit of Leeuw Kraal with but the clothes she wore and her Bible tied up in a red-and-white handkerchief. Mevrouw’s eyes had been weak, and to save her mistress’s eyes Deltje as a young girl had been taught to read. Juriaan could neither read nor write, and when on their marriage night Deltje had opened her Bible and read to him it had seemed to him that no music in all the world could be so beautiful as this. In old age her voice had become thin as a bird’s, but her reading was still beautiful to him. Their years of poverty, which might have embittered them, their childlessness, ​which might have driven them apart, had but drawn them closer together, and it was together that they now faced Deltje’s pain. And to them both, because all their lives they had been healthy, Deltje’s pain was like a thing apart: a mysterious and powerful third person who, for incomprehensible reasons, clutched at Deltje’s side and forced her to lie helpless for hours on the low wooden bedstead in the little bedroom.
The three-roomed mud-walled house in which the old couple lived stood close to a small stream behind a row of peach-trees. Every year from these trees they took a thank-offering of dried fruit to the Thanksgiving at Harmonie, and year by year they had beaten the stones of the peaches into the earthen floor of the living-room. Every morning Deltje sprinkled this floor with clear water from the stream and swept it with a stiff besom. The floors of the kitchen and bedroom she smeared regularly with a mixture of cow-dung and ashes called mist. The ​little house smelt always of mist, of strong black coffee, the beans of which were ground with peas to make it go further, and of griddle cakes baked in the ashes of the open fire in the kitchen.
The living-room, with its three chairs strung with thongs of leather, its table scrubbed a bright yellow with the yellow-bush that grew on the mountain-side, and its gaily painted waggon-box, was a small square room with a half-door opening on to the yard behind the peach-trees. This was the only door the house possessed, for the doorways between the living-room and the kitchen and the living-room and the bedroom were empty. The partition wall, built like the outer walls of mud, did not go up to the reed-and-thatch roof, but ended, within reach, in a flat ledge on which pumpkins, twisted rolls of tobacco, little bags of seed, bars of home-made soap and water-candles, and various odds and ends were stored. From the rafters hung cobs of dried mealies, and just outside the door was ​the worn mealie-stamper, cut out of a tree-trunk and shaped like an hour-glass, in which the mealies were pounded into meal. There was one window, in the wall opposite the half-door. It had no glass, and was closed by an unpainted wooden shutter. Built into the wall between the living-room and the bedroom were three small shelves, and here Deltje kept their few treasures: her Bible, two cups and saucers, thick and heavy, with roses like red cabbages around them, a little pink mug, with "A Present for a Good Girl" in letters of gold on one side of the handle and a golden Crystal Palace on the other, a green and red-crocheted wool mat, a black-bordered funeral card in memory of Mijnheer van der Wenter's mother, an ostrich egg, and a small box lined with blue satin and covered with rows of little shells round an inch-square mirror. This was the pride of their simple hearts, and these, after fifty years of life together, were their treasures.
It was on the uppermost of the three ​shelves that for over a year now Deltje had kept the little bottles of "Grandmother's Drops" which, from time to time, Juriaan had got for her from the Jew-woman's store at Harmonie, for the pain in her side. At first the drops had seemed definitely to relieve Deltje's pain, to baffle the mysterious third person who caused it, and even when the attacks became more frequent and more violent the faith of both Deltje and Juriaan had persisted because of the printed word on the wrapper. But in the month of January Juriaan's faith at last was shaken. In that month of long hot days there came a succession of attacks which exhausted all the remaining drops and left Deltje weak and helpless as an infant on the low wooden bed. And leaving her there Juriaan went down in haste to the Jew-woman's store at Harmonie.
When Juriaan reached the little white-washed store, with the sign "Winkel" printed crookedly with a blue-bag over its door, he found there Piet Deiselmann, the transport-​rider between Platkops dorp and Princestown village. Piet Deiselmann, eager, impetuous, a Platkops man who was full of pride for Dutch Platkops and contempt for English Princestown, was speaking to the old Jew-woman and her grandson of the new hospital which had lately been opened in Platkops dorp, and of which Juriaan up in the mountains had never heard before. The hospital was the first to be built in the Little Karoo, and it was Dutch Platkops that had built it. In Princestown, said Piet Deiselmann contemptuously, men might still die by hundreds for want of a hospital, but in Platkops there was now no need to suffer pain. One went to the Platkops hospital so ill that one had to be carried there, and one left it leaping and praising the Lord.
All that Piet Deiselmann said of the hospital filled Juriaan, with Deltje’s damp twisted face always before him, with a strange agitation of hope, wonder, and fear. For long he dared not speak. But at last, in ​a voice that quavered and broke, he asked:
“And must a man then be rich to go to the hospital in Platkops dorp?”
“Rich!” cried Piet Deiselmann. “Rich? Let a man be so poor as he can be to live and at the hospital they will take him in.”
“Our Father!” said Juriaan in wonder. “Our Father!” And it was as if, staring at the transport-rider, he already saw Deltje, her round, soft, childish face alight with joy, leaping and praising the Lord on the hospital stoep.
Juriaan went back to the mountains and found Deltje as he had left her on the feather bed. He poured out some drops for her, made some strong black coffee and brought it to her with a little black bread, and then sitting down on a low stool by her side spoke of the hospital in Platkops dorp. All that Piet Deiselmann had said he repeated, and in his slow quiet speech everything Piet Deiselmann had said seemed to gain a greater significance. And holding Deltje’s hand in his ​he told her how he would put the feather bed in the ox-cart, and his reed-and-canvas tent over the cart, and his love, his heart, the joy of his life, would lie there like a bird in its nest; and so carefully as if it were the very Ark of the Lord that he were driving he would take her in to the hospital in Platkops dorp and her pain would be cured. . . . He spoke as Piet Deiselmann had done of men leaping and praising the Lord, and so great was now their faith in everything that Piet Deiselmann had said that it was as if within their old and worn bodies their hearts were already leaping and praising Him.
Early the next morning the old man began his preparations for the journey. He went first up to the kraal on the mountain-side where Jafta Nicodemus, the Vergelegen shepherd, kept his master's flocks, and it was settled that for some rolls of tobacco Jafta would take charge of his goats and his hens. His lands he must leave to God. He went back to the house, and stretching an old sail​cloth across a bamboo frame fixed this tent to his ox-cart. Under the cart he tied the big black kettle and the three-legged pot which were their only cooking utensils. He filled a small water-cask from the stream and tied that also below the cart. He brought out the painted waggon-box and fixed it in front of the cart for a seat. In the box was their small store of provisions: biltong, a small bag of coffee, a kid-skin full of dried rusks, meal for griddle cakes, and the salted ribs of a goat recently killed. Behind the cart he tied some bundles of forage, and below the forage dangled a folding stool. On the floor of the cart he spread the feather bed, pillows and blankets for Deltje's nest.
When all was ready, and the two plough-oxen were inspanned, Deltje came out to the cart. She wore her black calico Sacrament gown and sunbonnet, and on her stockingless feet were veldschoen which Juriaan himself had made for her. She carried in her hand a red cotton handkerchief, sprinkled with ​white moons, in which were her Bible, the Present for a Good Girl, and the little satin-lined, shell-covered box. Excitement, or the drops, had eased for the time her pain, and her round, smooth, innocent face was alight with her faith in the Almighty, her faith in the hospital, and her faith in Juriaan. And as Juriaan helped her into the cart he called her again by those tender, beautiful, and endearing names which were the natural expression of his love.
The journey to Platkops dorp by ox-cart from Vergelegen took three nights and the greater part of three days. They travelled slowly because of Deltje's pain, and with frequent outspans to rest their oxen. From Vergelegen to Harmonie all was familiar to them, but not for many years had they been farther afield than Harmonie, and even in the blazing January heat the straight grey road through the brown parched veld, with farlying homesteads in bare parched lands, was full of interest to them. At night, when the ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/32 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/33 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/34 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/35 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/36 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/37 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/38 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/39 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/40 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/41 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/42 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/43 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/44 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/45 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/46 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/47 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/48 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/49 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/50 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/51 ​Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/52