The Resurrection of Olive

Abstract

Cradock Public Library this morning. She had gone to considerable pains: photographs of the stone grave on Buffelskop, an edition of the Nuwe Afri kaner, photostats of documents. And suddenly, along with the smells of sun-baked stone and bruised spekboom leaves rising from the documents lying open before me, that sad summer rose up again before me: unbidden, with all the disagreeableness of unassimilated recollection. My intense love for that piece of earth first found expression in a brief newspaper report. In the small town library, my grazed knee still stinging after a game of bok-bok at school, I came across: body was embalmed and placed in a teak coffin, zinc-lined, and after a simple service laid to rest temporarily at Woltemade No 1. Mean while the sarcophagus was being built on the top of Buffelskop out of iron stone, by a local stonemason, Joe Mann. When everything was ready, Olive's body was brought up by train and at De Aar, was waiting with two small coffins. One of the baby and the other of their beloved dog, Nit a. On 13th August a little procession of friends climbed up Buffelskop, the coffins being carried by ten staunch natives. How good it was that Olive should sleep in nature's open temple with its magical beauty and vastness of space. Cronwright Schreiner, who spoke a few moving words, ended by repeating a verse from Tennyson's 'In Memoriam':