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DORIS LESSIN&
bachelor, and I was right-because when I'd done with Joburg, not
a moment too soon, and driven down to the Orange Free, and
arrived on the doorstep, there was Hans, but not a sign of a wife and
Esther turned out to be-but first I take pleasure in telling you that
the beautiful brown-eyed poet with his noble brow and pale dimpled
skin was bald, he has a tonsure, I swear it; and he's fat, a sort of
smooth pale fat. He's like a monk, lard-colored and fat and smooth.
Esther is the cook, or rather, his jailor. She's a Zulu, a great fat
woman, and I swear she put the fear of God into me before I even
got into the house. Tantie Gertie's house is a square brick four–
roomed shack, you know the kind, with an iron roof and verandahs
-well, what you'd expect in Blagspruit. And Esther stood about
six feet high in a white apron and a white
doekie
and she held a
lamp up in one great black fist and looked into my face and sighed
and went off into her kitchen singing Rock of Ages.
la,
I promise you.
And I looked at Hans, and all he said was: "Its O.K., man, she
likes you, come in."
She gave us a great supper of roast mutton and pumpkin
fritters and samp, and then some preserved fruit. She stood over us,
arms folded, as we ate, and when Johannes left some mutton fat,
she said in her mellow hymn-singing voice: "Waste not, want not,
Master Johannes." And he ate it all up.
la.
She told me I should
have some more peaches for my health, but I defied her and I fdt
as guilty as a small kicker, and I could see Hans eyeing me down
the table and wondering where I got the nerve. She lives in the
kia
at the back, one small room with four children by various fathers,
but no man, because God is more than enough for her now, you can
see, with all those kids and Hans to bring up the right way. Auntie's
store is a Drapery and General Goods in the main street, called
Gertie's Store, and Hans was running it with a Colored man. But
I heard Esther with my own ears at supper saying to his bowed bald
shamed head: "Master Johannes, I heard from the cook at the
Predikant's house today that the dried peaches have got worms in
them." And Hans said: "O.K., Esther, I'll send them up some of
the new stock tomorrow."
Right. We spent all that evening talking and he was the same
old Hans, you remember how he used to sit, saying not a blerry
word, smiling that sweet dimpled smile of his, listening, listening,
