Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [35]
Nevertheless, he has a sense of what lies behind these words. Outa Jaap was part of the farm; though his grandfather may have been its purchaser and legal owner, Outa Jaap came with it, knew more about it, about sheep, veld, weather, than the newcomer would ever know. That was why Outa Jaap had to be deferred to; that is why there is no question of getting rid of Outa Jaap’s son Ros, now in his middle years, though he is not a particularly good workman, unreliable and prone to get things wrong.
It is understood that Ros will live and die on the farm and be succeeded by one of his sons. Freek, the other hired man, is younger and more energetic than Ros, quicker on the uptake and more dependable. Nevertheless, he is not of the farm: it is understood that he will not necessarily stay.
Coming to the farm from Worcester, where Coloured people seem to have to beg for whatever they get (Asseblief my nooi! Asseblief my basie!), he is relieved at how correct and formal relations are between his uncle and the volk. Each morning his uncle confers with his two men about the day’s tasks. He does not give them orders. Instead he proposes the tasks that need to be done, one by one, as if dealing cards on a table; his men deal their own cards too. In-between there are pauses, long, reflective silences in which nothing happens. Then all at once, mysteriously, the whole business seems to be settled: who will go where, who will do what. ‘Nouja, dan sal ons maar loop, baas Sonnie!’ – We’ll get going! And Ros and Freek don their hats and briskly set off.
It is the same in the kitchen. There are two women who work in the kitchen: Ros’s wife Tryn, and Lientjie, his daughter from another marriage. They arrive at breakfast time and leave after the midday meal, the main meal of the day, the meal that is here called dinner. So shy is Lientjie of strangers that she hides her face and giggles when spoken to. But if he stands at the kitchen door he can hear, passing between his aunt and the two women, a low stream of talk that he loves to eavesdrop on: the soft, comforting gossip of women, stories passed from ear to ear to ear, till not only the farm but the village at Fraserburg Road and the location outside the village are covered by the stories, and all the other farms of the district too: a soft white web of gossip spun over past and present, a web being spun at the same moment in other kitchens too, the Van Rensburg kitchen, the Alberts kitchen, the Nigrini kitchen, the various Botes kitchens: who is getting married to whom, whose mother-in-law is going to have an operation for what, whose son is doing well at school, whose daughter is in trouble, who visited whom, who wore what when.
But it is Ros and Freek with whom he has more to do. He burns with curiosity about the lives they live. Do they wear vests and underpants like white people? Do they each have a bed? Do they sleep naked or in their work clothes or do they have pyjamas? Do they eat proper meals, sitting at table with knives and forks?
He has no way of answering these questions, for he is discouraged from visiting their houses. It would be rude, he is told – rude because Ros and Freek would find it embarrassing.
If it is not embarrassing to have Ros’s wife and daughter work in the house, he wants to ask, cooking meals, washing clothes, making beds, why is it embarrassing to visit them in their house?
It sounds like a good argument, but there is a flaw in it, he knows. For the truth is that it is embarrassing to have Tryn and Lientjie in the house. He does not like it when he passes Lientjie in the passage and she has to pretend she is invisible and he has to pretend she is not there. He does not like to see Tryn on her knees at the washtub washing his clothes. He does not know how to answer her when