Title: Call me master
Author: Olga Levinson
Publisher: Central News Agency Ltd.
South Africa, 1958
Original cloth binding, original dustcover, 15x22 cm, 164 pages, several scetches, illustrations by Wolf von Loeben
Satisfactory. Dustcover worn, inside clean.
A rare book.
From the chapter Biltong and bread? Not b—likely! Every visit to Farm entailed two dreaded tasks for the cuisine — the making of biltong and bread. Both of these labours demanded not only a great deal of time on the part of the womenfolk, but taxed their physical strength to the utmost. The whole biltong cycle was to my mind typical of the male autocracy that imperially governed Farm. The menfolk, Jack, Herr von Klot, perhaps a neighbour or visitor, their sons, even native farm-hands, in fact, everyone and anyone, except us female chattels would embark upon the kudu hunt.
They would jump out of bed with boyish anticipation just as dawn was breaking — we womenfolk naturally having risen even still earlier in order to serve them their breakfast, and equip them with thermos flasks of coffee and a hamper.
Sometimes they would leave in the late afternoon, in which case we would be kept sitting up half the night waiting for them. As they drove off on the kudu hunt, excited and full of loud good humour, shouldering their guns and ammunition, a positive aura of smug masculinity seemed to hover over them.
The womenfolk would watch them disappear in a cloud of dust, then return to their dreary household drudgery with secret envy smouldering in their hearts. The dull hours would drag by, and then suddenly Farm would become alive again. All the native servants who had meanwhile vanished would excitedly reappear. The womenfolk would run outside, just as the triumphant jeep or Land Rover or horse-cart drew to a shuddering stop with the conquering heroes. (...)