The Grass Is Singing

by Doris Lessing

  “It’s all right for me to live this way, I suppose,” said Mary grimly.

  “You should have thought of that before you married me,” said Dick, and she blazed into fury because of his callous injustice. Or rather, she almost blazed into anger. Her face went beef-red, her eyes snapped—and then she subsided again, folding trembling hands over each other, shutting her eyes. The anger vanished: she was feeling too tired for real temper. “I am getting on for forty,” she said wearily. “Can’t you see that very soon I won’t be able to have a child at all? Not if I go on like this.”

  “Not now,” he said inexorably. And that was the last time a child was ever mentioned. She knew as well as he did that it was folly, really, Dick being what he was, using his pride over borrowing as a last ditch for his self-respect.

  Later, when he saw she had lapsed back into that terrible apathy, he appealed again: “Mary, please come to the farm with me. Why not? We could do it together.”

  “I hate your farm,” she said in a stiff, remote voice. “I hate it, I want nothing to do with it.”

  But she did make the effort, in spite of her indifference. It was all the same to her what she did. For a few weeks she accompanied Dick everywhere he went, and tried to sustain him with her presence. And it filled her with despair more than ever. It was hopeless, hopeless. She could see so clearly what was wrong with him, and with the firm, and could do nothing to help him. He was so obstinate. He asked her for advice, looked boyishly pleased when she picked up a cushion and trailed after him off to the lands; yet, when she made suggestions his face shut into dark obstinacy, and he began defending himself.

  Those weeks were terrible for Mary. That short time, she looked at everything straight, without illusions, seeing herself and Dick and their relationship to each other and to the farm, and their future, without a shadow of false hope, as honest and stark as the truth itself. And she knew she could not bear this sad clear-sightedness for long; that, too, was part of the truth. In a mood of bitter but dreamy clairvoyance she followed Dick around, and at last told herself she should give up making suggestions and trying to prod him into commonsense. It was useless.

  She took to thinking with a dispassionate tenderness about Dick himself. It was a pleasure to her to put away bitterness and hate against him, and to hold him in her mind as a mother might, protectively, considering his weaknesses and their origins, for which he was not responsible. She used to take her cushion to the corner of the bush, in the shade, and sit on the ground with her skirts well tucked up, watching for ticks to crawl out of the grass, thinking about Dick. She saw him standing in the middle of the big red land, balanced among the huge clods, a spare, fly-away figure with his big flopping hat and loose clothing, and wondered how people came to be born without that streak of determination, that bit of iron, that clamped the personality together.

  Dick was so nice—so nice! she said to herself wearily. He was so decent; there wasn’t an ugly thing in him. And she knew, only too well, when she made herself face it (which she was able to do, in this mood of dispassionate pity) what long humiliation he had suffered on her account, as a man. Yet he had never tried to humiliate her: he lost his temper, yes, but he did not try to get his own back. He was so nice! But he was all to pieces. He lacked that thing in the center that should hold him together.

  And had he always been like that? Really, she didn’t know. She knew so little about him. His parents were dead; he was an only child. He had been brought up somewhere in the suburbs of Johannesburg, and she guessed, though he had not said so, that his childhood had been less squalid than hers, though pinched and narrow. He had said angrily that his mother had had a hard time of it; and the remark made her feel kin to him, for he loved his mother and had resented his father. And when he grew up he had tried a number of jobs. He had been clerk in the post office, something on the railways, had finally inspected watermeters for the municipality. Then he had decided to become a vet. He had studied for three months, discovered he could not afford it; and, on an impulse, had come to Southern Rhodesia to be a farmer, and to “live his own life.”

  So here he was, this hopeless, decent man, standing on his “own” soil, which belonged to the last grain of sand to the Government, watching his natives work, while she sat in the shade and looked at him, knowing perfectly well that he was doomed: he had never had a chance. But even then it seemed impossible to her, that such a good man should be a failure. And she would get up from the cushion, and walk across to him, determined to have one more try.

  “Look, Dick,” she said one day, timidly, but firmly, “look, I have an idea. Next year, why not try to stump another hundred acres or so, and get a really big crop in, all mealies. Plant mealies one very acre you have, instead of all these little crops.”

  “And what if it is a bad season for mealies?”

  She shrugged: “You don’t seem to be getting very far as you are.”

  And then his eyes reddened, and his face set, and the two deep lines scored from cheekbones to chin deepened.

  “What more can I do than I am doing?” he shouted at her. “And how can I stump a hundred acres more? The way you talk! Where am I to get the labor from? I haven’t enough labor to do what I have got to do now. I can’t afford to buy niggers at five pounds a head any longer. I have to rely on voluntary labor. And it just isn’t coming any more. It’s partly your fault. You lost me twenty of my best boys, and they’ll never come back. They are out somewhere else giving my farm a bad name, at this moment, because of your damned temper. They are just not coming to me now as they used. No, they all go into the towns where they loaf about doing nothing.”

  And then, this familiar grievance carried him away, and he began to storm against the Government, which was under the influence of the nigger-lovers from England, and would not force the natives to work on the land, would not simply send out lorries and soldiers and bring them to the farmers by force. The Government never understood the difficulties of farmers! Never! And he stormed against the natives themselves, who refused to work properly, who were insolent—and so on. He talked on and on, in a hot, angry, bitter voice, the voice of the white farmer, who seems to be contending, in the Government, with a force as immovable as the skies and seasons themselves. But, in this storm of resentment, he forgot about the plans for next year. He returned to the house preoccupied and bitter, and snapped at the houseboy, who temporarily represented the genus native, which tormented him beyond all endurance.

  Mary was worried by him at this time, so far as she could be worried in her numbed state. He would return with her at sundown tired and irritable, to sit in a chair smoking endlessly. By now he was a chain-smoker, though he smoked native cigarettes which were cheaper, but which gave him a perpetual cough and stained his fingers yellow to the middle joints. And he would fidget and jig about in the chair, as if his nerves simply would not relax. And then, at last, his body slackened and he lay limp, waiting for supper to come in, so that he could go to bed at last and sleep.

  But the houseboy would enter and say there were farm boys waiting to see him, for permission to go visiting, or something of that kind, and Mary would see that tense look return to Dick’s face, and the explosive restlessness of his limbs. It seemed that he could not bear natives any more. And he would shout at the houseboy to get out and leave him alone and tell the farm natives to get to hell back to the compound. But in half an hour the servant would return, saying patiently, bracing himself against Dick’s irritation, that the boys were still waiting. And Dick would stub out the cigarette, immediately light another and go outside, shouting at the top of his voice.

  Mary used to listen, her own nerves tense. Although this exasperation was so familiar to her, it annoyed her to see it in him. It irritated her extremely, and she would be sarcastic when he came back, and said, “You can have your troubles with the natives, but I am not allowed to.”

  “I tell you,” he would say, glaring at her from hot, tormented eyes, “I can’t stand
them much longer.” And he would subside, shaking all over, into his chair.

  But in spite of this perpetual angry undercurrent of hate, she was disconcerted when she saw him talking, to his bossboy perhaps, on the lands. Why, he seemed to be growing into a native himself, she thought uneasily. He would blow his nose on his fingers into a bush, the way they did; he seemed, standing beside them, to be one of them; even his color was not so different, for he was burned a rich brown, and he seemed to hold himself the same way. And when he laughed with them, cracking some joke to keep them good-humored, he seemed to have gone beyond her reach into a crude horse-humor that shocked her. And what was to be the end of it, she wondered? And then an immense fatigue would grip at her, and she thought dimly: “What does it matter, after all?”

  At last she said to him that she saw no point spending all her time sitting under a tree with ticks crawling up her legs, in order to watch him. Especially when he took no notice of her.

  “But Mary, I like you being there.”

  “Well, I’ve had enough of it.”

  And she lapsed into her former habits, ceasing to think about the farm. The farm was the place from which Dick returned to eat and sleep.

  And now she gave way. All day she sat numbly on the sofa with her eyes, feeling the heat beating in her brain. She was thirsty: it was too much of an effort to get a glass of water or to call the boy to get it for her. She was sleepy; but to get up from where she sat and climb on the bed was an exhausting labor. She slept where she was. Her legs felt, as she walked, that they were too heavy for her. To make a sentence was an overwhelming effort. For weeks on end she spoke to no one but Dick and the servant; and even Dick she saw for five minutes in the morning and for half an hour at night, before he dropped exhausted into bed.

  The year moved through the cold bright months towards the heat; and, as it advanced the wind drove a rain of fine dust through the house, so that surfaces were gritty to the touch; and spiraling dust-devils rose in the lands below, leaving a shining wreckage of grass and maize husks hanging in the air like motes. She thought of the heat ahead with dread, but not able to summon up enough energy to fight it. She felt as if a touch would send her off balance into nothingness; she thought of a full complete darkness with longing. Her eyes closed, she imagined that the skies were blank and cold, without even stars to break their blackness.

  It was at this time, when any influence would have directed her into a new path, when her whole being was poised, as it were, waiting for something to propel her one way or the other, that her servant, once again, gave notice. This time there was no row over a broken dish or a badly-washed plate: quite simply, he wanted to go home; and Mary was too indifferent to fight. He left, having brought in his place a native whom Mary found so intolerable that she discharged him after an hour’s work. She was left servantless for a while. Now she did not attempt to do more than was essential. Floors were left unswept, and they ate tinned food. And a new boy did not present himself. Mary had earned such a bad name among them as a mistress that it became increasingly difficult as time went on to replace those who left.

  Dick, unable to stand the dirt and bad food any longer, said he would bring up one of the farm natives for training as a houseboy. When the man presented himself at the door, Mary recognized him as the one she had struck with the whip over the face two years before. She saw the scar on his cheek, a thin, darker weal across the black skin. She stood irresolute in the doorway, while he waited outside, his eyes bent down. But the thought of sending him back to the lands and waiting for somebody else to be sent up; even this postponement tired her. She told him to come in.

  That morning, because of some inward prohibition she did not try to explain, she could not work with him as was usually her custom on these occasions. She left him alone in the kitchen; and when Dick came up, said, “Isn’t there another boy that will do?”

  Dick, without looking at her, and eating as he always did these days, in great gulps, as if there was no time, said: “He’s the best I could find. Why?” He sounded hostile.

  She had never told him about the incident of the whip, for fear of his anger. She said: “He doesn’t seem a very good type to me.” As she spoke she saw that look of exasperation grow on his face, and added hastily, “But he will do, I suppose.”

  Dick said: “He is clean and willing. He’s one of the best boys I have ever had. What more do you want?” He spoke brusquely, almost with brutality. Without speaking again he went out. And so the native stayed.

  She began on the usual routine of instruction, as cold-voiced and methodical as always, but with a difference. She was unable to treat this boy as she had treated all the others, for always, at the back of her mind, was that moment of fear she had known just after she had hit him and thought he would attack her. She felt uneasy in his presence. Yet his demeanor was the same as in all the others; there was nothing in his attitude to suggest that he remembered the incident. He was silent, dogged and patient under her stream of explanations and orders. His eyes he always kept lowered, as if afraid to look at her. But she could not forget it, even if he had; and there was a subtle difference in the way she spoke to him. She was as impersonal as she knew how to be; so impersonal that her voice was free, for a while even of the usual undertone of irritation.

  She used to sit quite still, watching him work. The powerful, broad-built body fascinated her. She had given him white shorts and shirts to wear in the house, that had been used by her former servants. They were too small for him; as he swept or scrubbed or bent to the stove, his muscles bulged and filled out the thin material of the sleeves until it seemed they would split. He appeared even taller and broader than he was, because of the littleness of the house.

  He was a good worker, one of the best she had had. She used to go round after him trying to find things that he had left undone, but she seldom did. So, after a while, she became used to him, and the memory of that whip slashing across his face faded. She treated him as it was natural to her to treat natives, and her voice grew sharp and irritated. But he did not answer back, and accepted her often unjust rebukes without even lifting his eyes off the ground. He might have made up his mind to be as neutral as he knew how.

  And so they proceeded, with everything apparently as it should be, a good routine established, that left her free to do nothing. But she was not quite as indifferent as she had been.

  By ten in the morning, after he had brought her tea, he would go off to the back behind the chicken-runs under a big tree, carrying a tin of hot water; and from the house she sometimes caught a glimpse of him bending over it, sluicing himself, naked from the waist up. But she tried not to be around when it was time for his bath. After this was over, he came back to the kitchen and remained quite still, leaning against the back wall in the sun, apparently thinking of nothing. He might have been asleep. Not until it was time to prepare lunch did he start work again. She tried to think of work he could do, but there was nothing. It annoyed her to think of him standing idly there, immobile and silent for hours, under the unshaded force of the sun which seemed not to affect him. There was nothing she could do about it, though instead of sinking into a dreary lethargy that was almost sleep, she would rack her brains to think of work she could give him.

  One morning she went out to the fowl-runs, which she often forgot to do these days; and when she had finished a perfunctory inspection of the nesting-boxes, and her basket was filled with eggs, she was arrested by the sight of the native under the trees a few yards off. He was rubbing his thick neck with soap, and the white lather was startlingly white against the black skin. He had his back to her. As she looked, he turned, by some chance, or because he sensed her presence, and saw her. She had forgotten it was his time to wash.

  A white person may look at a native, who is no better than a dog. Therefore she was annoyed when he stopped and stood upright, waiting for her to go, his body expressing his resentment of her presence there. She was furious that perhaps he believed she
was there on purpose; this thought, of course, was not conscious; it would be too much presumption, such unspeakable cheek for him to imagine such a thing, that she would not allow it to enter her mind; but the attitude of his still body as he watched her across the bushes between them, the expression on his face, filled her with anger. She felt the same impulse that had once made her bring down the lash. across his face. Deliberately she turned away, loitered round the chicken-runs, and threw out handfuls of grain; and then slowly stooped out through the low wired door. She did not look at him again; but knew he was standing there, a dark shape, quite motionless, seen out of the corner of her eye. She went back to the house, for the first time in many months jerked clean out of her apathy, for the first time in months seeing the ground she walked over, and feeling the pressure of the sun against the back of her bare neck, the sharp hot stones pressing up under her soles.

  She heard a strange angry muttering, and realized she was talking to herself, out loud, as she walked. She clapped her hand over her mouth, and shook her head to clear it; but by the time that Moses had come back into the kitchen, and she heard his footsteps, she was sitting in the front room rigid with an hysterical emotion; when she remembered the dark resentful look of that native as he stood waiting for her to leave, she felt as if she had put her hand on a snake. Impelled by a violent nervous reaction she went to the kitchen, where he stood in clean clothes, putting away his washing things. Remembering that thick black neck with the lather frothing whitely on it, the powerful back stooping over the bucket, was like a goad to her.

  And she was beyond reflecting that her anger, her hysteria, was over nothing, nothing that she could explain. What had happened was that the formal pattern of black-and-white, mistress-and-servant, had been broken by the personal relation; and when a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is his chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.