Mafeking Road Read Free

jealous of a person like Fritz Pretorius. I was only annoyed at the thought that he was making himself ridiculous by going to a party with an outlandish thing like a handkerchief.
    We arrived at Willem Prinsloo’s house. There were so many ox-wagons drawn up on the veld that the place looked like a laager. Prinsloo met us at the door.
    â€œGo right through, kêrels,” he said, “the dancing is in the voorhuis. The peach brandy is in the kitchen.”
    Although the voorhuis was big it was so crowded as to make it almost impossible to dance. But it was not as crowded as the kitchen. Nor was the music in the voorhuis – which was provided
by a number of men with guitars and concertinas – as loud as the music in the kitchen, where there was no band, but each man sang for himself.
    We knew from these signs that the party was a success.
    When I had been in the kitchen for about half an hour I decided to go into the voorhuis. It seemed a long way, now, from the kitchen to the voorhuis, and I had to lean against the wall several times to think. I passed a number of other men who were also leaning against the wall like that, thinking. One man even found that he could think best by sitting on the floor with his head in his arms.
    You could see that Willem Prinsloo made good peach brandy.
    Then I saw Fritz Pretorius, and the sight of him brought me to my senses right away. Airily flapping his white handkerchief in time with the music, he was talking to a girl who smiled up at him with bright eyes and red lips and small white teeth.
    I knew at once that it was Grieta.
    She was tall and slender and very pretty, and her dark hair was braided with a wreath of white roses that you could see had been picked that same morning in Zeerust. And she didn’t look the sort of girl, either, in whose presence you had to appear clever and educated. In fact, I felt I wouldn’t really need the twelve times table which I had torn off the back of a school writing book and had thrust into my jacket pocket before leaving home.
    You can imagine that it was not too easy for me to get a word in with Grieta while Fritz was hanging around. But I managed it
eventually, and while I was talking to her I had the satisfaction of seeing, out of the corner of my eye, the direction Fritz took. He went into the kitchen, flapping his handkerchief behind him – into the kitchen, where the laughter was, and the singing, and Willem Prinsloo’s peach brandy.
    I told Grieta that I was Schalk Lourens.
    â€œOh, yes, I have heard of you,” she answered, “from Fritz Pretorius.”
    I knew what that meant. So I told her that Fritz was known all over the Marico for his lies. I told her other things about Fritz. Ten minutes later, when I was still talking about him, Grieta smiled and said that I could tell her the rest some other night.
    â€œBut I must tell you one more thing now,” I insisted. “When he knew that he would be meeting you here at the dance, Fritz started doing homework.”
    I told her about the slate and the sums, and Grieta laughed softly. It struck me again how pretty she was. And her eyes were radiant in the candlelight. And the roses looked very white against her dark hair. And all this time the dancers whirled around us, and the band in the voorhuis played lively dance tunes, and from the kitchen there issued weird sounds of jubilation.
    The rest happened very quickly.
    I can’t even remember how it all came about. But what I do know is that when we were outside, under the tall trees, with the stars over us, I could easily believe that Grieta was not a girl
at all, but one of the witches of Abjaterskop who wove strange spells.
    Yet to listen to my talking nobody would have guessed the wild, thrilling things that were in my heart.
    I told Grieta about last year’s drought, and about the difficulty of keeping the white ants from eating through the door and window-frames, and about the way my