Just as important as the Bible. That is blasphemy, Jong. Uncle Tromp tried to look stern, but his gratification softened the line of his mouth and Manfred did not apologize.
Instead he went on eagerly, For the first time ever I know who I am, and why I am here. Then my efforts have not been wasted, Uncle Tromp murmured and they were silent again until the old man sighed. 'Writing a book is a lonely thing, he mused. Like crying with all your heart into the night when there is nobody out there in the darkness, nobody to hear your cry, nobody to answer you. I heard you, Uncle Tromp. Ja, jong, so you did, but only you. However, Uncle Tromp was wrong. There were other listeners out there in the darkness.
The arrival of a stranger in the village was an event; the arrival of three strangers together was without parallel or precedent and raised a storm of gossip and speculation that had the entire population in a fever of curiosity.
The strangers arrived from the south on the weekly mail train. Taciturn and granite-faced, dressed in severe dark broadcloth and carrying their own carpet bags, they crossed the road from the railway siding to the tiny iron- roofed boarding house run by the widow Vorster and were not seen again until Sunday morning when they emerged to stride down the rutted sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder, grim and devout, wearing the white neckties and black suits of deacons of the Dutch Reformed Church and carrying their black leatherbound prayer books under their right arms like sabres, ready to unsheath and wield upon Satan and all his works.
They stalked down the aisle and took the front pew beneath the pulpit as if by right, and the families who had sat on those benches for generations made no demur but quietly found places for themselves at the rear of the nave.
Rumours of the presence of the strangers, they had already been dubbed the three wise men, had permeated to the remotest surrounding districts and even those who had not been inside the church in years, drawn by curiosity, now packed all the pews and even stood against the walls.
It was a better turnout even than last Dingaan's Day, the Day of the Covenant with God in thanksgiving for victory over the Zulu hordes and one of the most sacred occasions in the calendar of the Reformed Church.
The singing was impressive. Manfred stood beside Sarah and was so touched by the crystalline beauty of her sweet contralto that he was inspired to underscore it with his untrained but ringing tenor. Even under the deep hood of her traditional Voortrekker bonnet Sarah looked like an angel, golden blonde and lovely, her features shining with religious ecstasy. At fourteen years her womanhood was just breaking into tender uncertain bloom so that Manfred felt a strange breathlessness when he glanced at her over the hymn book they were sharing and she looked up and smiled at him with so much trust and adoration.
The hymn ended and the congregation settled down through a scraping of feet and muted coughing into a tense expectant silence. Uncle Tromp's sermons were renowned throughout South-West Africa, the best entertainment in the territory after the new moving-picture house in Windhoek which very few of them had dared to enter, and Uncle Tromp was in high fettle this day, provoked by the three sober-faced inscrutable gentlemen in the front row who had not even had the common decency to make a courtesy call at the pastory since arriving. He leaned his great gnarled fists on the rail of the pulpit and hunched over them like a prize fighter taking his guard, then he glanced down on his congregation with outraged contempt and they quailed before him with tremulous delight, knowing exactly what that expression presaged.
Sinners! Uncle Tromp let fly with a bellow that rang against the roof timbers and the three dark-suited strangers jumped in their seats as though a cannon had been fired under them. The House of God is filled with unrepentant sinners, and Uncle Tromp was away; he flailed them with dreadful accusations, raking them with that special tone which Manfred thought of privately as the voice and then lulling them with gentle sonorous passages and promises of salvation before again hurling threats of brimstone and damnation at them like fiery spears, until some of the women were weeping openly and there were hoarse spontaneous cries of Amen and Praise the Lord and Hallelujah and in the end they went down trembling on their knees as he prayed for their very souls.
Afterwards they streamed out of the church with a sort of nervous relief, garrulous and gay as though they had just survived some deadly natural phenomenon such as earthquake or gale at sea. The three strangers were the last to leave, and at the door where Uncle Tromp waited to greet them they shook his hand and each of them spoke quietly and seriously to him in their turn.
Uncle Tromp listened to them gravely, then turned to consult briefly with Aunt Trudi before turning back to them.
I would be honoured if you would enter my home and sit at my board. The four men paced in dignified procession up to the pastory, Aunt Trudi and the children following at a respectful distance. She muttered terse instructions to the girls as they walked and the minute they were out of public view they scampered away to open the drapes in the dining-room, which was only used on very special occasions, and to move the dinner setting from the kitchen to the heavy stinkwood dining-table that was Trudi's inheritance from her mother.
The three strangers did not allow their deep erudite discussion to interfere with their appreciation of Aunt Trudi's cooking, and at the bottom of the table the children ate in dutiful but goggle-eyed silence. Afterwards the men drank their coffee and smoked a pipe on the front stoep, the drone of their voices soporific in the midday heat, and then it was time to return to divine worship.
The text that Uncle Tromp had chosen for his second sermon was 'The Lord has made straight a path for you in the wilderness'. He delivered it with all his formidable rhetoric and power, but this time he included passages from his own book, assuring his congregation that the Lord had chosen them particularly as a people and set aside a place for them. It remained only for them to reclaim that place in this land that was their heritage. More than once Manfred saw the three grim-faced strangers sitting in the front pew glance at one another significantly as Uncle Tromp was speaking.
The strangers left on the southbound mail train on Monday mornin& and for the days and weeks that followed a brittle sense of expectancy pervaded the pastory. Uncle Tromp, breaking his usual custom, took to waiting at the front gate to greet the postman each morning. Quickly he would peruse the packet of mail, and each day his disappointment became more obvious.
Three weeks passed before he gave up waiting for the postman. So he was in the tool-shed with Manfred, drilling the Fitzsimmons shift into him, honing that savage left hand of Manfred's, when the letter finally arrived.
it was lying on the hall table when Uncle Tromp went up to the house to wash for supper, and Manfred, who had walked up with him, saw him blanch when he observed the seal of the high moderator of the church on the flap of the envelope. He snatched up the envelope and hurried into his study, slamming the door in Manfred's face. The lock turned with a heavy chink. Aunt Trudi had to wait supper almost twenty minutes before he emerged again, and his grace, full of praise and thanksgiving was twice its usual length. Sarah rolled her eyes and squinted comically across the table at Manfred, and he cautioned her with a quick frown. At last Uncle Tromp roared Amen'. Yet he still did not take up his soupspoon but beamed down the length of the table at Aunt Trudi.
My dear wife,he said. You have been patient and uncomplaining all these years. Aunt Trudi blushed scarlet. Not
