A LETTER FROM HOME
193
the sack from my University, and I've got four daughters these days,
had you forgotten?) no one would see anything in them but good
, poetry.
Which is how Hans saw them, poor innocent soul, he was
surprised at what people saw in them, and he was all upset. He
didn't like being called all those names, and the good country boys
from their fine farms and the smart town boys from their big houses
all
started taking positions and making remarks, and our Hans, he
was
reduced to pap, because he's not a fighter, Hans, he was never
a taker of positions on the side of justice freedom and the rest, for
tell you the truth, I don't think he ever got round to defining them.
Coed.
He resigned, in what might be called a dignified silence, but
his
friends knew it was just plain cowardice or if you like incomprehen–
sion about what the fuss was over, and he went to live in Blagspruit
in the Orange Free, where his Tantie Gertrude had a house. He
helped her in her store. Ja, that's what he did. What did we all say
to this? Well, what do you think? The inner soul of the artist
(et
cetera) knows what is best, and he probably
needed
the Orange
Free and his Auntie's store for his development. Well, something
like that. To tell the truth, we didn't say much, he simply dropped
out. And time passed.
I
a.
Then they made me editor of
Onwards,
and
thinking about our indigenous poets I remembered Johannes Potgieter,
and wrote, What about a poem from you?-feeling bad because when
I
counted up the years it was eight since I'd even thought of him,
even counting those times when one says drunk at dawn: Remember
Hans? Now, there was a poet ...
. No reply, so I let an editorial interval elapse and I wrote again,
and I got a very correct letter back. Well phrased. Polite. But not
just that, it took me an hour to work out the handwriting-it was
in
a sort of Gothic print, each letter a work of art, like a medieval
manuscript. But all he said, in that beautiful black art-writing was:
He was very well, he hoped I was very well, the weather was good,
except the rains were late, his Tantie Gertie was dead, and he was
running the store.
((lou
vriend,
Johannes Potgieter."
Right.
Coed.
I was taking a trip up to Joburg so I wrote and
said I'd drop in at Blagspruit on my way back and I got another
Manu Script, or Missal, saying he hoped to see me, and he would
prepare Esther for my coming. I thought, he's married, poor
kerel,
and it was the first time I'd thought of him as anything but a born
