You can always get people to listen to a story with a murder and a hanging in it (Oom Schalk Lourens said). And it doesn’t matter, then, if it is even quite an ordinary sort of murder. Nor are people particular if the hanging is not so very up-to-date, either. They can stand it.
The authorities ordered the old gaol in Potchefstroom to be rebuilt because it was damp; and neither light nor air could get into it. And it was very unhealthy. Many people considered that this was a foolish step on the part of the authorities, rebuilding the place. After all, what was the good of a prison if it wasn’t unhealthy?
The prisoners from behind the bars of their cells saw the outer walls of the prison being pulled down. And they started getting hopeful. But the look of expectancy went from their faces when they were shortly afterwards moved to another prison. With the walls down, the gallows in the courtyard stood revealed. And so the story of Karel Malan and Thys Burkhardt — and of Wiesie van Breda — was recalled as clearly as though the gallows had been erected only yesterday, and not half a century before.
You might think, perhaps, that an old gaol is a strange setting for the story of a courtship. But when it is young love, in the springtime — why, the gates of a prison can help a good deal to make it impressive. Young hearts and an old gaol. I ‘ve seen it happen here, in the Marico Bushveld. And I have seen the same thing in the bioscope in Zeerust. Maybe the best kind of love story is when it’s round a prison.
Wiesie van Breda had been betrothed to Karel Malan, the young Sunday school teacher, a good while before she attracted the attention of Thys Burkhardt, who was not like a Sunday school teacher at all. For when Thys Burkhardt laughed in the bar you could hear him as far as Suid Street.
Then one Sunday morning Thys Burkhardt was found lying in the vlei with a Mauser bullet in his heart. And for Karel Malan a class sat waiting, on the hard benches of a Sunday school, a long while, in vain.
Karel Malan was tried for the murder of Thys Burkhardt and was sentenced to be hanged.
That was why Karel Malan would not one day be coming out of the church with Wiesie van Breda’s hand tucked under his arm, the members of the congregation throwing rice. It was all just because what Karel Malan carried in the bend of his arm was not his hymn-book on that Sunday morning when he went through the vlei looking for Thys Burkhardt.
And the story that got spread about Karel Malan, later on, was that he was never hanged. He had family — and church — influence, it was said. And on the night preceding the morning set down for his execution he was smuggled out of the prison in time to get on the mail-coach for the Cape, the hangman walking in front, carrying Karel Malan’s portmanteau as far as the coach station for him.
There was not much evidence in support of this story — as there never is, in such matters, I have noticed. But then, it was not likely that a condemned man would be smuggled out of a prison at night in such a way that everybody could see it being done. The authorities would not have moved Karel Malan out of the prison as openly as they were, 50 years later, to move all the convicts to another place of confinement — the authorities even allowing the Salvation Army to distribute tracts to the prisoners as they came out of the front gate. The municipal refuse span used very bad language, that time, about all the religious leaflets they had to sweep up that the more hardened convicts threw away in the street.
About all there was to go by, with regard to Karel Malan having been smuggled out of gaol, was the statement made by the driver of the Cape stage-coach. The driver said that he had a passenger aboard from the Transvaal who sang Sunday school hymns right as far into the Karoo as Matjesfontein, at which place the passenger got hoarse.
When a responsible citizen in the Potchefstroom saloon bar put him the question, the driver of the stage-coach said, yes, he did notice that the passenger had a portmanteau. But he wouldn’t know whether a hangman had carried it for some distance. He hadn’t taken a proper look at the handle of the portmanteau, the stage-coach driver said.
The other piece of evidence was that Warder Visagie — who had not been at the Potchefstroom gaol above a month or two — was suddenly transferred to Pretoria. And people said it was because he talked too much.
Well, it was true enough that Warder Visagie was talking quite a lot about then. But his talk was mostly about a girl with ringlets, who lived next door to the boarding-house in which he was staying, and with whom he had fallen in love, having seen her a few times on the other side of the galvanised-iron fence; and who didn’t seem to want him; and whose name he didn’t know, even, he being too shy to ask — contenting himself, instead, with throwing her an orange.
“I honestly don ‘t know anything about a hanging in the gaol just lately, ” Warder Visagie announced in the saloon bar. “I mean, if there was a hanging I would have known, wouldn’t I? Especially if it was a white man, as you say … What? Oh, him. Well, I mean, I never worried much about Karel Malan. With nothing more on his mind than a hanging, Karel Malan couldn’t know what real trouble was. I tell you, her hair is all in ringlets. And I could never work up enough courage to talk to her, even. And then I threw her that ripe orange for a present. And it had to be my luck that it should hit her on her left ear, just as she was walking back into the kitchen. And she said to me, ‘Why don’t you — ‘ And she slammed the kitchen door shut behind her.”
Warder Visagie sighed deeply, then, in that old saloon bar in which a shining paraffin lamp had a few months earlier taken the place of a row of candles.
“She’s got dark eyes, ” Warder Visagie said after a pause, “as far as I can see from my side of the fence. And she ‘s got ringlets. And her eyes turn up at the corners when she laughs.”
“I should think she must laugh a good deal, ” the bartender said, drily, “looking at what’s on the other side of the fence.”
Because he didn’t catch on, the patrons of the saloon bar understood that Warder Visagie really was in love. His face that was flushed with brandy was also strangely shadowed under the paraffin lamp.
All those stories were remembered, in great detail, 50 years later, at the rebuilding of the old gaol. The Potchefstroom public walked about the prison terrain, after the front walls had been demolished, with a freedom that even a prison governor of long standing would never have dared assume and that even the oldest convict would not have permitted himself, as long as he had any appearance to keep up.
The first thing that struck visitors from the town about the prison was the fine state of preservation of the gallows. Riem Pienaar summed it up in these words: “They don’t make gallows like that these days. Today, they would never use that class of wood anymore.”
But it was just like Riem Pienaar to talk that way, of course, as though he knew everything: in this case, he was talking as an authority on being hanged. The truth was, however, that with the years Riem Pienaar had gained an ascendancy with the citizens of Potchefstroom, just through making statements that nobody thought of questioning.
“All the same,” Riem Pienaar asserted, “if Karel Malan really had been hanged, the gallows wouldn’t have looked nearly so new. You’ve got no idea how old a gallows gets to look, suddenly, just from having had a white man hanged from it.”
Nobody tried to argue with Riem Pienaar. From past experience they knew it was useless.
Now, it was just at this time, too, that the Sunday school building had to be extended and repaired. The thatched roof had to be replaced by galvanised iron. And it so happened that the contract for the work on the Sunday school building was given to the same builder who was renovating the gaol. The price he had quoted the church was so low.
There was some dissatisfaction among a section of churchgoers, however, when they discovered why the builder could make the extensions to the Sunday school so cheaply. They found he was using the building materials from the gaol.
When the matter was put to him the builder affected surprise.
“Why, there ‘s no better timber in the country for the rafters than what I’m taking out of the gaol,” he said. “It’s real stinkwood. And as good as when it was put up. Where can you get timber like that today?”
He said he would also have used the windows of the gaol for the Sunday school. Only, he added, the gaol had no windows. It was not the sort of gaol that went in for fresh air.
Nevertheless, the protests began again when the builder had the gallows cut down, as well, and got the kaffirs to carry the gallows timber across the way to the Sunday school.
“Why, it’s real oak, ” he said. “This wood is as solid as the day they hanged Karel Malan on it. It’s also seasoned.”
The builder seemed surprised that his arguments did not silence the protests.
It was in the midst of this unpleasantness that it became known that the Sunday school was being haunted by Karel Malan’s ghost. You could understand that, with his gallows gone, the murderer of Thys Burkhardt would not be able to rest in peace. Karel Malan had got used to his gallows standing there for over half a century. That was what some people said. Others said again that why Karel Malan was haunting the Sunday school building was because he himself had been a Sunday school teacher. His spirit was unhappy at the builder’s desecration of the place of worship in which he had worked earnestly in the old days.
Those who had seen the ghost of Karel Malan all described it in the same way. It was the ghost of an old man with a long white beard. This was a sufficiently singular circumstance. How could Karel Malan’s ghost grow old like that, if he had been hanged in his early manhood?
A few days later the builder’s kaffirs found a very old man with a white beard walking about the Sunday school building where they were busy extending a wall. And they were in deadly fear, the kaffirs said. For they thought that the old man with the white beard was from the Works Department, and that he would discover that the mortar they were mixing consisted of six wheelbarrow-loads of river sand to one shovelful of cement.
In a few minutes a small band had gathered about the old man. He was plied with questions. “Are you really Karel Malan? ” “Did you murder Thys Burkhardt?” “Is it true that you escaped the night before you were going to be hanged?”
The old man could answer only falteringly. He had forgotten most of the early years of his life, he said. But he knew he had lived in Potchefstroom as a young man. Certain scenes were still familiar to him.
The builder tapped his forehead.
“The old Oom is clearly in his second childhood,” the builder said. “But maybe he is after all Karel Malan. And there is one person alone who can prove it — Tant Wiesie van Breda.”
It was quite a procession that moved off shortly, with the white-bearded old man and the builder at the front, in the direction of Wiesie van Breda’s cottage.
Riem Pienaar thoughtfully went on ahead to prepare Wiesie van Breda’s mind beforehand. She mustn’t faint, but her dead lover was at that moment coming up the street, some people with him, Riem Pienaar warned Wiesie van Breda.
It took quite a lot of rooi laventel and a cup of water to bring Wiesie van Breda round again, because of Riem Pienaar ‘s tactful words. And when the elderly stranger came in at the front gate, the crowd around him having grown quite considerably, Wiesie van Breda was able to take a good look at him and to assure the bystanders that he wasn’t Karel Malan.
Riem Pienaar looked a very disappointed man.
“Could he — ” Riem Pienaar asked after a pause, “could he perhaps be the other one? Thys Burkhardt, that is? ” His voice did not sound very hopeful.
In the meantime, although the stranger was not Karel Malan come back from the past, Wiesie van Breda nevertheless falteringly held out her hand to him.
The elderly stranger was the first to talk.
“What did you mean when you said to me, ‘Why don’t you —?'” the old man asked. “You’ve still got ringlets … “
“I meant, ‘Why don’t you come round to the front door and knock?'” Wiesie van Breda answered. “Where’s that funny blue uniform you used to wear, with the flat cap?”
“Your eyes still turn up like that at the corners when you laugh, ” the old man said. “I’m on pension and I’ve come to settle down here, ” ex-Warder Visagie added, during all that time not letting go of Wiesie van Breda’s hand.