The Grass Is Singing

by Doris Lessing

  Again, she was playing, this time with her parents and her brother and sister, before she went to bed. It was a game of hide-and-seek, and it was her turn to cover her eyes while her mother hid herself. She knew that the two older children were standing on one side watching; the game was too childish for them, and they were losing interest. They were laughing at her, who took the game so seriously. Her father caught her head and held it in his lap with his small hairy hands, to cover up her eyes, laughing and joking loudly about her mother hiding. She smelled the sickly odor of beer, and through it she smelled too—her head held down in the thick stuff of his trousers—the unwashed masculine smell she always associated with him. She struggled to get her head free, for she was half-suffocating, and her father held it down, laughing at her panic. And the other children laughed too. Screaming in her sleep she half-awoke, fighting off the weight of sleep on her eyes, filled with terror of the dream.

  She thought she was still awake and lying stiffly on the sofa listening intently for the breathing next door. It continued for a long time, while she waited for each soft expulsion of breath. Then there was silence. She gazed in growing terror round the room, hardly daring to move her head for fear of disturbing the native through the wall, seeing the dull light fall in a circle on the table, illuminating its rough surface. In her dream the conviction grew that Dick was dead—that Dick was dead, and that the black man was waiting next door for her coming.

  Slowly she sat up, disentangling her feet from the clinging weight of the coat, trying to control her terror. She repeated to herself that there was nothing to fear. At last she gathered her legs close, and let them down over the edge of the sofa, very quietly, not daring to make a sound. Again she sat trembling, trying to calm herself, until she forced her body to raise itself and stand in the middle of the room, measuring the distance between herself and the bedroom, seeing the shadows in the skins on the floor with terror, because they seemed to move up at her in the swaying of the lamplight.

  The skin of a leopard near the door seemed to take shape and fill out, its little glassy eyes staring at her. She fled to the door to escape it. She stood cautiously, putting out a hand to part the heavy curtain. Slowly she peered through. All she could see was the shape of Dick lying still under the blankets. She could not see the African, but she knew he was waiting for her there in the shadow. She parted the curtains a little more. Now she saw on leg stretching from the wall into the room, an enormous, more than life-size leg, the limb of a giant. She went forward a little: now she could see him properly.

  Dreaming, she felt irritated and let down, for the native was asleep, crouched against the wall, exhausted after long wakefulness. He sat as she had seen him sit sometimes in the sun, with one knee up, his arm resting on it loosely, so that the palm turned over and the fingers curled limply. The other leg, the one she had first seen, stretched almost to where she stood, and at her feet she saw the thick skin of the sole, cracked and horny. His head was bent forward on his chest, showing his thick neck. She felt as she sometimes did when, awake, she had expected to find that he had left undone something he was paid to do, and taking herself to look, found everything in order.

  Her annoyance with herself turned into anger against the native; and now she looked towards the bed again where Dick lay stretched and motionless. She stepped over the giant leg lying over the floor, and moved silently round the bed with her back to the window. Bending over Dick she felt the night air blow coolly on her shoulders, and with sharp anger said to herself that the native had opened the window again, and had caused Dick’s death through chill. Dick looked ugly. He was dead, yellow-faced, his mouth fallen open and his eyes staring. In her dream she put out her hand to touch his skin. It was cold, and she felt only relief and exultation. At the same time she felt guilty because of her gladness, and tried to arouse in herself the sorrow she ought to feel.

  As she stood, bending forward over Dick’s stillness, she knew the native had silently awakened and was watching her. Without turning her head, she saw at the edge of her vision the great leg softly withdrawn, and she knew he was standing in the shadow. Then he was coming towards her. It seemed as if the room were very big, and he was approaching her slowly from an immense distance. She stood rigid with fear, the chill sweat running down her body, waiting.

  He approached slowly, obscene and powerful, and it was not only he, but her father who was threatening her. They advanced together, one person, and she could smell, not the native smell, but the unwashed smell of her father. It filled the room, musty, like animals; and her knees went liquid as her nostrils distended to find clean air and her head became giddy. Half-conscious, she leaned back against the wall for support, and nearly fell through the open window. He came near and put his hand on her arm. It was the voice of the African she heard. He was comforting her because of Dick’s death, consoling her protectively; but at the same time it was her father menacing and horrible, who touched her in desire.

  She screamed, knowing suddenly she was asleep and in nightmare. She screamed and screamed desperately, trying to wake herself from the horror. She thought: my screams must be waking Dick; and she struggled in the sands of sleep. Then she was awake and sitting up, panting. The African was standing beside her, red-eyed and half-asleep, holding out to her a tray with tea. The room was filled with a thick gray light, and the still burning lamp sent a thin beam to the table. Seeing the native, with the terror of the dream still in her, she shrank back into the corner of the sofa, breathing fast and irregularly, watching him in a paroxysm of fright. He put the tray down, clumsily, because of his weariness, and she struggled in her mind to separate dream from reality.

  The man said, watching her curiously, “The boss is asleep.” And her knowledge that Dick lay dead next door faded. But still she watched the black man, warily, unable to speak. She saw in his face surprise at her posture of fear, and she watched grow there that look she had so often seen lately, half sardonic, speculative, brutal, as if he were judging her. Suddenly he said softly: “Madame afraid of me, yes?” It was the voice of the dream, and as she heard it, her body went weak and she trembled. She fought to control her voice, and spoke after a few minutes in a half whisper: “No, no, no. I am not afraid.” And then she was furious with herself for denying something whose possibility should never even be admitted.

  She saw him smile, and watched his eyes drop to her hands, which lay on her lap trembling. His eyes traveled up her body slowly to her face, taking in the hunched shoulders, the way her body was pressed into the cushions for support.

  He said easily, familiarly, “Why is Madame afraid of me?”

  She said half-hysterically, in a high-pitched voice, laughing nervously: “Don’t be ridiculous. I am not afraid of you.” She spoke as she might have done to a white man, with whom she was flirting a little. As she heard the words come from her mouth, and saw the expression on the man’s face, she nearly fainted. She saw him give her a long, slow, imponderable look: then turn, and walk out of the room.

  When he had gone, she felt released from an inquisition. She sat weak and shaking, thinking of the dream, trying to clear away the fog of horror.

  After a while she poured out some tea, spilling it into the saucer. Again, as she had done in her dream, she forced herself to stand up and walk into the room next door. Dick was sleeping quietly, and looked better. Without touching him she left him, passing to the veranda, where she leaned forward against the chilly bricks of the balustrade, breathing in drafts of cool morning air. It was not sunrise yet. All the sky was clear and colorless, flushed with rosy streaks of light, but there was darkness still among the silent trees. She could see faint smoke rising in drifts from the small clustering huts of the compound, and knew that she must go and beat the gong for the day’s work to begin.

  All that day she sat in the bedroom as usual, watching Dick grow better hourly, although he was very weak still, and not yet well enough to be irritable.

  She did not go around the f
arm at all that day. And she avoided the native; she felt that she was too unsure of herself, had not the strength to face him. When he had left after lunch for his time off, she went hastily to the kitchen, almost furtively, made cold drinks for Dick, and returned looking behind her as if pursued.

  That night she locked all the doors of the house, and went to bed beside Dick, thankful, perhaps for the first time in their marriage, for his closeness.

  He was back at work in a week.

  Again, falling swiftly, one after the other, the days passed, the long days spent alone in the house while Dick was on the lands, alone with the African. She was fighting against something she did not understand. Dick became to her, as time went by, more and more unreal; while the thought of the African grew obsessive. It was a nightmare, the powerful black man always in the house with her, so that there was no escape from his presence. She was possessed by it, and Dick was hardly there to her.

  From the time she woke in the morning to find the native bending over them with the tea, his eyes averted from her bare shoulders, until the time he was out of the house altogether, she could never relax. Fearfully, she did her work in the house, trying to keep out of his way; if he was in one room she went to another. She would not look at him; she knew it would be fatal to meet his eyes, because now there was always the memory of her fear, of the way she had spoken to him that night. She used to give her orders hurriedly, in a strained voice, then hastily leave the kitchen. She dreaded hearing him speak, because now there was a new tone in his voice: familiar, half-insolent, domineering. A dozen times she was on the point of saying to Dick, “He must go.” But she never dared. Always she stopped herself, unable to bear the anger that would follow. But she felt as if she were in a dark tunnel, nearing something final, something she could not visualize, but which waited for her inexorably, inescapably. And in the attitude of Moses, in the way he moved or spoke, with that easy, confident, bullying insolence, she could see he was waiting too. They were like two antagonists, silently sparring. Only he was powerful and sure of himself, and she was undermined with fear, by her terrible dream-filled nights, her obsession.

  10

  People who live to themselves, whether from necessity or choice, and who do not trouble themselves about their neighbors’ affairs, are always disquieted and uneasy if by some chance they come to know that other people discuss them. It is as though a sleeping man should awake and find round his bed a circle of strangers staring at him.

  The Turners, who might have been living on the moon for all the thought they gave to “the district,” would have been astonished if they had known that for years they had provided the staple of gossip among the farmers round about. Even people they knew by name only, or those they had never heard of, discussed them with an intimate knowledge that was entirely due to the Slatters.

  It was all the Slatters’ fault—yet how can one blame them? No one really believes in the malignancy of gossip, save those who know how they themselves have suffered from it; and the Slatters would have cried, had they been challenged: “We have told people nothing but the truth”—but with that self-conscious indignation that confesses guilt. Mrs. Slatter would have had to be a most extraordinary woman to remain perfectly impartial and fair to Mary, after having been snubbed so many times. For she had made repeated attempts to “get Mary out of herself,” as she put it. Sensing Mary’s fierce pride (she had plenty of her own), she had asked her time and time again to a party, or a tennis afternoon, or an informal dance.

  Even after the second of Dick’s illnesses she had tried to make Mary break her isolation: the doctor had been frighteningly cynical about the Turner menage. But always came back those curt little notes from Mary (the Turners had not had a telephone installed when everyone else did, because of the expense) that were like the deliberate ignoring of an offered hand. When Mrs. Slatter came across Mary in the store on post days, she had always asked her, with unfailing kindness, to come over some time. And Mary had always replied stiffly that she would like to, but that “Dick was so busy just now.” But it was a long time now since anyone had seen Mary or Dick at the station.

  “What did they do?” people asked. At the Slatters’ people always asked what the Turners did. And Mrs. Slatter, whose good humor and patience had at long last given out, was prepared to tell them. There was that time Mary ran away from her husband—but that must be a good six years ago now. And Charlie Slatter would chip in, telling his story how Mary had arrived hatless and shabby, after having walked alone over the veld (although she was a woman), and asked him to drive her in to the station. “How was I to know she was running off from Turner? She didn’t tell me. I thought she was going in for a day’s shopping, and Turner was too busy. And when Turner came over, half-batty with worry, I had to tell him I had taken her in. She shouldn’t have done it. It was not the right thing to do.”

  The story had by now become monstrously distorted. Mary had run away from her husband in the middle of the night because he had locked her out, had found refuge with the Slatters, had borrowed money from them to leave. Dick had come after her next morning and promised never to ill treat her again. That was the story, told all over the district to the accompaniment of headshaking and tongue-clickings. But when people started saying that Slatter had horsewhipped Turner, it was too much: Charlie got annoyed. He liked Dick, though he despised him. Dick he was sorry for. He began to put people right about the affair. He repeated continually that Dick should have let Mary go. It was good riddance. He was well out of it and didn’t know when he was lucky. So, slowly, because of Charlie, the thing was reversed. Mary was execrated; Dick exonerated. But of all this interest and talk, Mary and Dick remained ignorant. Necessarily so, since for years they had been confined to the farm.

  The real reason why the Slatters, particularly Charlie, maintained their interest in the Turners, was that they wanted Dick’s farm still: more even than they had. And, since it was Charlie’s intervention that precipitated the tragedy, though he cannot be blamed for it, it is necessary to explain about his farming. Just as World War II produced its fabulously wealthy tobacco barons, so the First World War enriched many farmers because of the sharp rise in the price of maize. Until World War I, Slatter had been poor; after it, he found himself rich.

  And once a man is rich, when he has the temperament of a Slatter, he gets richer and richer. He was careful not to invest his money in farming: farming he did not trust as an investment. Any surplus went into mining shares; and he did not improve his farm more than was essential for the purpose of making money from it. He had five hundred acres of the most beautiful rich dark soil, which in the old days had produced twenty-five and thirty bags of mealies to the acre. Year after year he had squeezed that soil, until by now he got five bags an acre if he was lucky. He never dreamed of fertilizing. He cut down his trees (such as remained when the mining companies had done) to sell as firewood.

  But even a farm as rich as his was not inexhaustible; and while he no longer needed to make his thousands every year, his soil was played out, and he wanted more. His attitude to the land was fundamentally the same as that of the natives whom he despised; he wanted to work out one patch of country and move on to the next. And he had cultivated all the cultivatable soil. He needed Dick’s farm badly, because the farms that bounded his on the other sides were taken up. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with it. Dick’s farm consisted of a little bit of everything. He had a hundred acres of that wonderful dark soil; and it was not played out, because he had looked after it. He had a little soil suitable for tobacco. And the rest was good for grazing.

  It was the grazing Charlie wanted. He did not believe in pampering cattle by feeding them in winter. He turned them out to fend for themselves, which was all very well when the grass was good, but he had so many cattle and the grazing was thin and poor. So Dick provided the only outlet. For years Charlie had been planning for when Dick would be bankrupt. “How does he do it?” people asked irritably; for ever
yone knew that he never seemed to make any money, always had bad seasons, was always in debt. “Because they live like pigs and they never buy anything,” said Mrs. Slatter tartly; by now she felt that Mary could go and drown herself, for all she cared.

  Perhaps they would not have been so indignant and so irritated if Dick had been suitably conscious of his failure. If he had come to Charlie and asked for advice, and pleaded incapacity, it would have been different. But he did not. He sat tight on his debts and his farm, and ignored Charlie. To whom it occurred one day that he had not seen Dick at all for over a year. “How times flies!” said Mrs. Slatter, when he pointed this out; but after working it out, they agreed it was nearer two years; time, on a farm, has a way of prolonging itself unnoticed.

  That same afternoon Charlie drove over to the Turners. He was feeling a little guilty. He had always considered himself as Dick’s mentor, as a man with much longer experience and greater knowledge. He felt responsible for Dick, whom he had watched right from the time he first began to farm. As he drove, he kept a sharp eye for signs of neglect. Things seemed neither better nor worse. The fireguards along the boundary were there, but they would protect the farm from a small, slow-burning fire, not a big one with the wind behind it. The cowsheds, while not actually falling down, had been propped up by poles, and the thatched roofs were patched like darned stockings, the grass all different colors and stages of newness, reaching untidily to the ground in untrimmed swathes. The roads needed draining: they were in a deplorable state. The big plantation of gum trees past which the road went, had been burned by a veld-fire in one corner; they stood pale and spectral in the strong yellow afternoon sunlight, their leaves hanging stiffly down, their trunks charred black.