This story comes from South Africa
When the great drought entered its third year, the farmers of the Drogebult district were amongst the hardest hit, anywhere. Once-lush pastures became dusty plains that only the August winds could enjoy, and everywhere the cattle stood, verlep and forlorn under the burning sun.
Giel du Preez surveyed the remains of his herd from the shade of his voorstoep where he was drinking his coffee. “Ag nee, vrou,” he said. “There’s no future in farming, at least not here at Drogebult. We’ll sell the farm and trek to town. I hear there are good jobs going for a man who wants to work. Not here in the dorp, but in Joh’burg. That’s where we should go!”
Betsie du Preez was ten years her husband’s junior, and at thirty-two, felt that she was at last getting into her stride, now that the kids were off at school and she had some time to her self. She had never really liked the farming life, but she had stuck with it as she knew that Giel was a good man, (as far as that went), and would one day be in a position to let her become a lady. In the recent dry years, she had often hinted that they should move to the city, or at least to Drogebult town, but Giel had always said that he was a farmer; his place on the land!
And so when Giel said the magic words, she acted very fast, before he had time for any second thoughts. Within two months they had sold everything at a fair price (considering the drought) and were established in a rented house in Johannesburg. Another reason for her haste in making the move, was that she thought that the regular hours of a city job might put blinkers on Giel’s roving eye, which had caused her more than a few anxious moments.
Their sojourn in Johannesburg, where Giel got a job as a blockman with a meat wholesaler in Fordsburg, lasted only three months. The hours were long and awkward, and Giel du Preez found that he missed being his own boss, coming and going as he pleased. After a small altercation with the foreman, which resulted in a broken nose and some loose teeth for the latter, and a large admission-of-guilt fine for Giel, he loaded up his family and returned to the Drogebult district.
After looking at the available farms, he again decided that there was no future in farming, and bought the old butchery on the outskirts of town. It was almost bankrupt, and he got it very cheaply. Then, using the contacts he had made in the city, he imported the first cold-room to Drogebult.
When the contraption arrived on the back of three lorries, the locals came from far and wide to witness the spectacle. Heavily bearded farmers of the old school, stood back shaking their heads in wonder, and spoke of the bad old days.
Giel du Preez was well known in the district. He had never been widely respected as a farmer, but was well-enough liked, despite a certain tendency towards conceit. When it became known that Giel was to be running the old Vlaktes Butchery, many people agreed that Giel du Preez certainly knew his meat. Anyone, they said, who had invited Giel to a braai, knew how much he knew about meat. About how the chops should have been cut just a little bit thicker or thinner; how the wors needed just a little more garlic or a lot less mielie-meal. And how the rump steak should have been hung for just so many days longer or shorter, to ripen, as the case might be.
A few dissenters did say that as no-one had actually attended a braai at Giel du Preez’s farm to put his theories to the test, maybe his advice should be taken with just a little more salt! Generally however this was put down to Giel’s reputed parsimony, or maybe just his reputation as being slim. After all, wasn’t he the only farmer to have decided to sell his farm just before the bottom dropped out of the market?
And soon the people of the Drogebult district learned that Giel did in fact know his meat. Or at least had learned a lot during his time in Joh’burg. Even his harshest critics had to grudgingly admit that his meat was really good, and the business flourished as it had never done before. His fame even spread so that parties of housewives would travel all the way from Pretoria to get farm meat at farm prices.
He never enlightened them to the fact that he was buying all his meat on the Pretoria Market anyway. He felt, rightly, that the knowledge would only have spoiled their sense of adventure at braving the dreadful roads in the interests of economy.
Of course, it was Betsie who first realised just how well they were doing. Within a year she had bought a fine new home in town (on the right side of the railway line), and proceeded to alter and decorate it until it was the show house of the entire district. She hired a firm of landscape gardeners from Pretoria, and when their plans grew to green and perfect fruition, her garden was featured in Home & Garden magazine, with a smiling and younger-looking Betsie on the front cover.
Betsie had arrived. And having arrived, realised that it was rather infra-dig to be working behind the counter of a butchery. So she retired to her home where she could devote her considerable energies to good and charitable works in the district. And so Giel had to hire an assistant.
It was, everyone said later (although never to her face), Betsie’s own fault. I mean, everyone knew that Giel was not made of stone. And neither, for that matter, was Santa Germishuis, the eighteen year old blonde chosen by Giel to help oil the wheels of his commercial endeavours. The inevitable happened some six months after Betsie had become a lady of leisure. She called in at the butchery to get some cash for one of her good works, and as it was after four and the front door locked, let herself in with her own key.
Politicians often talk these days about “valuable insights”. But no politician ever had an insight as valuable as that which Betsie du Preez received that afternoon when she looked into the cold room. So valuable was it, that it bought her a very fine house at Umhlanga Rocks, as well as the cars, furs and trappings of a woman in her position, as the wronged partner in an in-community-of-property marriage. The scene within the cold room that day made her wonder about Giel. She had known him to be hot-blooded, but hell, this was a bit much!
At the auction there were few bidders. The breaking of the drought had meant that farmers were again making money and had no interest in buying a butchery. So it was sold, at a very low price to a young Englishman who had married a local girl and moved to the district for her sake.
Business at the Vlaktes Butchery picked up again, as though it had not had the sensational interruption; the new owners gaining a good deal of extra custom from sensation-seekers anxious to view the scene of the crime! For a while there were many jokes about red-hot lovers, but in time interest faded as newer scandals caught the popular fancy, and the attention of the district lapsed again into its own (and others’) affairs.
Giel du Preez got a job on the maintenance side, working for Consolidated Coldrooms. He was seen from time to time passing through the district. The affair had not done his reputation with the ladies much harm, and he was thought by some to cut a rather dashing figure in his red bakkie, despite the greasy overalls, which had replaced the silk shirts.
It must have been nearly two years before the Vlaktes Butchery again made news. But this time there was far less joking about it, and a far more philosophical discussion by people who are prone to that sort of thing. There was much philosophy expounded, particularly in the bar of the Drogebult Arms. But it is just possible that it was this type of deep philosophical discussion that caused the whole mess.
You see, Searle the Englishman, who had bought the butchery, had proved to be one of the chief philosophers to hold court at the Drogebult Arms of an evening. On Friday nights especially, he could be relied on to spend a lot of time pointlessly restating the old sayings and saws to anyone who would listen. As he was generally buying drinks at that time, he had no shortage of listeners. Among his favourite sayings were “the leopard doesn’t change his spots” and “the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime” and “once a thief, always a thief”, and things like that.
Such sayings seemed to bring him some sort of comfort as he brooded over his beer. But no one took much notice. Until afterwards, when it was too late. Only then did they examine Searle’s words with the brilliance of hindsight. Only then did they realise where Searle’s brooding fatalism was leading him.
Anyway, that is what they presumed. Why else would he have slammed the door of the cold room, trapping his wife and Giel du Preez fatally inside, before walking out into the deserted back yard and shooting himself?
When the great drought entered its third year, the farmers of the Drogebult district were amongst the hardest hit, anywhere. Once-lush pastures became dusty plains that only the August winds could enjoy, and everywhere the cattle stood, verlep and forlorn under the burning sun.
Giel du Preez surveyed the remains of his herd from the shade of his voorstoep where he was drinking his coffee. “Ag nee, vrou,” he said. “There’s no future in farming, at least not here at Drogebult. We’ll sell the farm and trek to town. I hear there are good jobs going for a man who wants to work. Not here in the dorp, but in Joh’burg. That’s where we should go!”
Betsie du Preez was ten years her husband’s junior, and at thirty-two, felt that she was at last getting into her stride, now that the kids were off at school and she had some time to her self. She had never really liked the farming life, but she had stuck with it as she knew that Giel was a good man, (as far as that went), and would one day be in a position to let her become a lady. In the recent dry years, she had often hinted that they should move to the city, or at least to Drogebult town, but Giel had always said that he was a farmer; his place on the land!
And so when Giel said the magic words, she acted very fast, before he had time for any second thoughts. Within two months they had sold everything at a fair price (considering the drought) and were established in a rented house in Johannesburg. Another reason for her haste in making the move, was that she thought that the regular hours of a city job might put blinkers on Giel’s roving eye, which had caused her more than a few anxious moments.
Their sojourn in Johannesburg, where Giel got a job as a blockman with a meat wholesaler in Fordsburg, lasted only three months. The hours were long and awkward, and Giel du Preez found that he missed being his own boss, coming and going as he pleased. After a small altercation with the foreman, which resulted in a broken nose and some loose teeth for the latter, and a large admission-of-guilt fine for Giel, he loaded up his family and returned to the Drogebult district.
After looking at the available farms, he again decided that there was no future in farming, and bought the old butchery on the outskirts of town. It was almost bankrupt, and he got it very cheaply. Then, using the contacts he had made in the city, he imported the first cold-room to Drogebult.
When the contraption arrived on the back of three lorries, the locals came from far and wide to witness the spectacle. Heavily bearded farmers of the old school, stood back shaking their heads in wonder, and spoke of the bad old days.
Giel du Preez was well known in the district. He had never been widely respected as a farmer, but was well-enough liked, despite a certain tendency towards conceit. When it became known that Giel was to be running the old Vlaktes Butchery, many people agreed that Giel du Preez certainly knew his meat. Anyone, they said, who had invited Giel to a braai, knew how much he knew about meat. About how the chops should have been cut just a little bit thicker or thinner; how the wors needed just a little more garlic or a lot less mielie-meal. And how the rump steak should have been hung for just so many days longer or shorter, to ripen, as the case might be.
A few dissenters did say that as no-one had actually attended a braai at Giel du Preez’s farm to put his theories to the test, maybe his advice should be taken with just a little more salt! Generally however this was put down to Giel’s reputed parsimony, or maybe just his reputation as being slim. After all, wasn’t he the only farmer to have decided to sell his farm just before the bottom dropped out of the market?
And soon the people of the Drogebult district learned that Giel did in fact know his meat. Or at least had learned a lot during his time in Joh’burg. Even his harshest critics had to grudgingly admit that his meat was really good, and the business flourished as it had never done before. His fame even spread so that parties of housewives would travel all the way from Pretoria to get farm meat at farm prices.
He never enlightened them to the fact that he was buying all his meat on the Pretoria Market anyway. He felt, rightly, that the knowledge would only have spoiled their sense of adventure at braving the dreadful roads in the interests of economy.
Of course, it was Betsie who first realised just how well they were doing. Within a year she had bought a fine new home in town (on the right side of the railway line), and proceeded to alter and decorate it until it was the show house of the entire district. She hired a firm of landscape gardeners from Pretoria, and when their plans grew to green and perfect fruition, her garden was featured in Home & Garden magazine, with a smiling and younger-looking Betsie on the front cover.
Betsie had arrived. And having arrived, realised that it was rather infra-dig to be working behind the counter of a butchery. So she retired to her home where she could devote her considerable energies to good and charitable works in the district. And so Giel had to hire an assistant.
It was, everyone said later (although never to her face), Betsie’s own fault. I mean, everyone knew that Giel was not made of stone. And neither, for that matter, was Santa Germishuis, the eighteen year old blonde chosen by Giel to help oil the wheels of his commercial endeavours. The inevitable happened some six months after Betsie had become a lady of leisure. She called in at the butchery to get some cash for one of her good works, and as it was after four and the front door locked, let herself in with her own key.
Politicians often talk these days about “valuable insights”. But no politician ever had an insight as valuable as that which Betsie du Preez received that afternoon when she looked into the cold room. So valuable was it, that it bought her a very fine house at Umhlanga Rocks, as well as the cars, furs and trappings of a woman in her position, as the wronged partner in an in-community-of-property marriage. The scene within the cold room that day made her wonder about Giel. She had known him to be hot-blooded, but hell, this was a bit much!
At the auction there were few bidders. The breaking of the drought had meant that farmers were again making money and had no interest in buying a butchery. So it was sold, at a very low price to a young Englishman who had married a local girl and moved to the district for her sake.
Business at the Vlaktes Butchery picked up again, as though it had not had the sensational interruption; the new owners gaining a good deal of extra custom from sensation-seekers anxious to view the scene of the crime! For a while there were many jokes about red-hot lovers, but in time interest faded as newer scandals caught the popular fancy, and the attention of the district lapsed again into its own (and others’) affairs.
Giel du Preez got a job on the maintenance side, working for Consolidated Coldrooms. He was seen from time to time passing through the district. The affair had not done his reputation with the ladies much harm, and he was thought by some to cut a rather dashing figure in his red bakkie, despite the greasy overalls, which had replaced the silk shirts.
It must have been nearly two years before the Vlaktes Butchery again made news. But this time there was far less joking about it, and a far more philosophical discussion by people who are prone to that sort of thing. There was much philosophy expounded, particularly in the bar of the Drogebult Arms. But it is just possible that it was this type of deep philosophical discussion that caused the whole mess.
You see, Searle the Englishman, who had bought the butchery, had proved to be one of the chief philosophers to hold court at the Drogebult Arms of an evening. On Friday nights especially, he could be relied on to spend a lot of time pointlessly restating the old sayings and saws to anyone who would listen. As he was generally buying drinks at that time, he had no shortage of listeners. Among his favourite sayings were “the leopard doesn’t change his spots” and “the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime” and “once a thief, always a thief”, and things like that.
Such sayings seemed to bring him some sort of comfort as he brooded over his beer. But no one took much notice. Until afterwards, when it was too late. Only then did they examine Searle’s words with the brilliance of hindsight. Only then did they realise where Searle’s brooding fatalism was leading him.
Anyway, that is what they presumed. Why else would he have slammed the door of the cold room, trapping his wife and Giel du Preez fatally inside, before walking out into the deserted back yard and shooting himself?