The Grass Is Singing

by Doris Lessing

  Everything was just the same: ramshackle, but not exactly hopeless.

  He found Dick sitting on a big stone by the tobacco barns, which were now used as store sheds, watching his boys stack the year’s supply of meal out of reach of the ants on strips of iron supported by bricks. Dick’s big floppy farm hat was pulled over his face, and he looked up to nod at Charlie, who stood beside him, watching the operations, his eyes narrowed, he was noting that the sacks in which the meal was held were so rotten with age that they were unlikely to last out the season.

  “What can I do for you?” asked Dick, with his usual defensive politeness. But his voice was uncertain; it sounded unused. And his eyes, peering painfully out of the shadow of the hat, were bright and anxious.

  “Nothing,” said Charlie curtly, giving him a slow, irritated look. “Just came to see how you were doing. Haven’t seen you for months.”

  To which there came no reply. The natives were finishing work. The sun had gone down, leaving a wake of sultry red over the kopjes, and the dusk was creeping over the fields from the edges of the bush. The compound, visible among the trees half a mile away as a group of conical shapes, was smoking gently, and there was a small glow of fire behind dark trunks. Someone was beating a drum; the monotonous tom-tom noise sounded the end of the day. The boys were swinging their tattered jackets over their shoulders and filing away along the edge of the lands.

  “Well,” said Dick, getting up with a painful stiff movement, “that’s another day finished.” He shivered sharply. Charlie examined him: big trembling hands as thin as spines; thin hunched shoulders set in a steady shiver. And it was very hot: the ground was glowing out warmth and the red flush in the sky was fiery. “Got fever?” asked Charlie. “No, don’t think so. Blood getting thin after all these years.”

  “More than thin blood is wrong with you,” retorted Charlie, who seemed to find it a personal triumph that Dick should have fever. Yet he looked at him kindly, his big bristly face with its little squashed-looking features intent and steady. “Get fever much these days? Had it since I brought the quack to see you?”

  “I get it quite often these days,” said Dick. “I get it every year. I had it twice last year.”

  “Wife look after you?”

  A worried look came on Dick’s face. “Yes,” he said.

  “How is she?”

  “Seems much the same.”

  “Has she been ill?”

  “No, not ill. But she’s not too good. Seems nervy. She’s run down. Been on the farm too long.” And then, in a rush, as if he could not keep it to himself another moment, “I am worried sick about her.”

  “But what’s the trouble?” Charlie sounded neutral; yet he never took his eyes off Dick’s face. The two men were still standing in the dusk under the tall shape of the barn. A sweetish moist smell came from the open door; the smell of freshly-ground mealies. Dick shut the door, which was half off its hinges, by lifting it into place with his shoulder. He locked it. There was one screw in the triangular flange of the hasp: a strong man could have wrenched it off the frame. “Come up to the house?” he asked Charlie, who nodded, and then inquired, looking around: “Where’s your car?”

  “Oh, I walk these days.”

  “Sold it?”

  “Yes. Cost too much to run. I send in the wagon now when I want something.”

  They climbed into Charlie’s monster of a car, which balanced and clambered over the rutted tracks too small for it. The grass was growing back over the roads now that Dick had no car.

  Between the low, tree-covered rise where the house was, and where the barns stood among bush, were lands which had not been cultivated. It looked as if they had been allowed to lie fallow, but Charlie, looking closely through the dusk, could see that among the grass and low bushes were thin, straggling mealies. He thought at first they had seeded themselves; but they seemed to be regularly planted. “What’s this?” he asked, “what’s the idea?”

  “I was trying out a new idea from America.”

  “What idea?”

  “The bloke said there was no need to plow or to cultivate. The idea is to plant the grain among ordinary vegetation and let it grow of itself.”

  “Didn’t work out, hey?”

  “No,” said Dick blankly. “I didn’t bother to reap it. I thought I might as well leave it to do the soil some good . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Experiment,” said Charlie briefly. It was significant that he sounded neither exasperated nor angry. He seemed detached; but kept glancing curiously, with an undercurrent of uneasiness, at Dick, whose face was obstinately set and miserable. “What was that you were saying about your wife?”

  “She’s not well.”

  “Yes, but why, man?”

  Dick did not answer for a while. They passed from the open lands, where the golden evening glow still lingered on the leaves, to the bush, where it was dense dusk. The big car zoomed up the hill, which was steep, its bonnet reaching up into the sky. “I don’t know,” said Dick at last. “She’s different lately. Sometimes I think she’s much better. It’s difficult to tell with women how they are. She’s not the same.”

  “But in what way?” persisted Charlie.

  “Well, for instance. Once, when she first came to the farm she had more go in her. She doesn’t seem to care. She doesn’t care about anything. She simply sits and does nothing. She doesn’t even trouble herself about the chickens and things like that. You know she used to make a packet out of them every month or so. And she doesn’t care what the boy does in the house. Once she used to drive me mad nagging. Nag, nag, nag, all day. You know how women get when they’ve been too long on the farm. No self-control.”

  “No woman knows how to handle niggers,” said Charlie.

  “Well, I am quite worried,” stated Dick, laughing miserably. “I should be quite pleased if she did nag.”

  “Look here, Turner,” said Charlie abruptly. “Why don’t you give up this business and get off the place. You are not doing yourself or your wife any good.”

  “Oh, we rub along.”

  “You are ill, man.”

  “I am all right.”

  They stopped outside the house. A glimmer of light came from within, but Mary did not appear. A second light sprang up in the bedroom. Dick had his eyes on it. “She’s changing her dress,” he said; and he sounded pleased. “No one has been here for so long.”

  “Why don’t you sell out to me? I’ll give you a good price for it.”

  “Where should I go?” asked Dick in amazement.

  “Get into town. Get off the land. You are no good on the land. Get yourself a steady job in town somewhere.”

  “I keep my end up,” said Dick resentfully.

  The thin shape of a woman appeared against the light, on the veranda. The two men got out of the car and went inside.

  “ ‘Evening, Mrs. Turner.”

  “Good evening,” said Mary.

  Charlie examined her closely when they were inside the lighted room, more closely because of the way she had said, “Good evening.” She remained standing uncertainly in front of him, a dried stick of a woman, her hair that had been bleached by the sun into a streaky mess falling round a scrawny face and tied on the top of her head with a blue ribbon. Her thin, yellowish neck protruded out of a dress that she had apparently just put on. It was a frilled raspberry-colored cotton; and in her ears were long red earrings like boiled sweets, that tapped against her neck in short swinging jerks. Her blue eyes, which had once told anyone who really took the trouble to look into them that Mary Turner was not really “stuck-up,” but shy, proud, and sensitive, had a new light in them. “Why, good evening!” she said girlishly. “Why, Mr. Slatter, we haven’t had the pleasure of seeing you for a long time.” She laughed, twisting her shoulder in a horrible parody of coquetry.

  Dick averted his eyes, suffering. Charlie stared at her rudely: stared and stared until at last she flushed and turned away, tossing her head. “Mr. Slatte
r doesn’t like us,” she informed Dick socially, “or otherwise, he would come to see us more often.”

  She sat herself down in the corner of the old sofa, which had gone out of shape and become a thing of lumps and hollows with a piece of faded blue stuff stretched over it.

  Charlie, his eyes on that material asked: “How is the store going?”

  “We gave it up, it didn’t pay,” said Dick brusquely. “We are using up the stock ourselves.”

  Charlie looked at Mary’s earrings, and at the sofa cover, which was of the material always sold to natives, an ugly patterned blue that has become a tradition in South Africa, so much associated with “kaffir truck” that it shocked Charlie to see it in a white man’s house. He looked round the place, frowning. The curtains were torn; a windowpane had been broken and patched with paper; another had cracked and not been mended at all; the room was indescribably broken down and faded. Yet everywhere were little bits of stuff from the store, roughly-hemmed, draping the back of a chair, or tucked in to form a chair seat. Charlie might have thought that this small evidence of a desire to keep up appearances was a good sign; but all his rough and rather brutal good humor was gone; he was silent, his forehead dark.

  “Like to stay to supper?” asked Dick at last.

  “No thanks,” said Charlie; then changed his mind out of curiosity. “Yes, I will.”

  Unconsciously the two men were speaking as if in the presence of an invalid; but Mary scrambled out of her seat, and shouted from the doorway: “Moses! Moses!”

  Then, since the native did not appear, she turned and smiled at them with social coyness, and said: “Excuse me, but you know what these boys are.”

  She went out. The men were silent. Dick’s face was averted from Charlie, who, since he had never become convinced of the necessity for tact, gazed intenlty at Dick, as if trying to force him into some explanation or statement.

  Supper, when it was brought in by Moses, consisted of a tray of tea, some bread and rather rancid butter, and a chunk of cold meat. There was not a piece of crockery that was whole; and Charlie could feel the grease on the knife he held. He ate with distaste, making no effort to hide it, while Dick said nothing, and Mary made abrupt, unrelated remarks about the weather with that appalling coyness, shaking her earrings, writhing her thin shoulders, ogling Charlie with a conventional flirtatiousness.

  To all this Charlie made no response. He said “Yes, Mrs. Turner. No, Mrs. Turner.” And looked at her coldly, his eyes hard with contempt and dislike.

  When the native came to clear away the dishes there was an incident that caused him to grind his teeth and go white with anger. They were sitting over the sordid relics of the meal, while the boy moved about the table, slackly gathering dishes together. Charlie had not even noticed him. Then Mary asked: “Like some fruit, Mr. Slatter? Moses, fetch the oranges. You know where they are.” Charlie looked up, his jaws moving slowly over the food in his mouth, his eyes alert and bright; it was the tone of Mary’s voice when she spoke to the native mat jarred on him: she was speaking to him with exactly the same flirtatious coyness with which she had spoken to himself.

  The native replied, with a rough offhand rudeness: “Oranges finished.”

  “I know they are not finished. There were two left. I know they are not.” Mary was appealing, looking up at the boy, almost confiding in him.

  “Oranges finished,” he repeated, in that tone of surly indifference, but with a note of self-satisfaction, of conscious power that took Charlie’s breath away. Literally, he could not find words. He looked at Dick, who was sitting staring down at his hands; and it was impossible to see what he was thinking, or whether he had noticed anything at all. He looked at Mary: her wrinkled yellow skin had an ugly flush under the eyes, and the expression on her face was unmistakably one of fear. She appeared to have understood that Charlie had noticed something; she kept glancing at him guiltily, smiling.

  “How long have you had that boy?” asked Charlie at last, jerking his head at Moses, who was standing at the doorway with the tray, openly listening. Mary looked helplessly at Dick.

  Dick said tonelessly, “About four years, I think.”

  “Why do you keep him?”

  “He’s a good boy,” said Mary, tossing her head. “He works well.”

  “It doesn’t seem like it,” said Charlie bluntly, challenging her with his eyes. But hers were evasive and uneasy. At the same time they held a gleam of secret satisfaction that sent the blood to Charlie’s head. “Why don’t you get rid of him? Why do you let him speak to you like that?”

  Mary did not reply. She had turned her head, and was looking over her shoulder at the doorway where Moses stood; and in her face was an ugly brainlessness that caused Charlie to shout out suddenly at the native: “Get away from there. Get on with your work.”

  The big native disappeared, responding at once to the command. And then there was a silence. Charlie was waiting for Dick to speak, to say something that showed he had not completely given in. But his head was still bent, his face dumbly suffering. At last Charlie appealed direct to him, ignoring Mary as if she were not present at all. “Get rid of that boy,” he said. “Get rid of him, Turner.”

  “Mary likes him,” was the slow, blank response.

  “Come outside, I want to talk to you.”

  Dick lifted his head and looked resentfully at Charlie; he resented that he was being forced to take notice of something he wanted to ignore. But he obediently hoisted his body out of the chair and followed Charlie outside. The two men went down the veranda steps, and as far as the shadow of the trees.

  “You’ve got to get away from here,” said Charlie curtly.

  “How can I?” said Dick listlessly. “How can I when I am still in debt.” And then, as if it were still a question of money, with nothing else involved, he said: “I know other people don’t seem to worry. I know there are plenty of farmers who are as hard up as I am and who buy cars and go on holidays. But I just can’t do it, Charlie. I can’t do it. I am not made that way.”

  Charlie said: “I’ll buy your farm from you and you can stay here as manager, Turner. But you must go away first for a holiday, for at least six months. You must get your wife away.”

  He spoke as if there could be no question of a refusal; he had been shocked out of self-interest. It was not even pity for Dick that moved him. He was obeying the dictate of the first law of white South Africa, which is: “Thou shalt not let your fellow whites sink lower than a certain point; because if you do, the nigger will see he is as good as you are.” The strongest emotion of a strongly organized society spoke in his voice, and it took the backbone out of Dick’s resistance. For, after all, he had lived in the country all his life; he was undermined with shame; he knew what was expected of him, and that he had failed. But he could not bring himself to accept Charlie’s ultimatum. He felt that Charlie was asking him to give up life itself, which, for him, was the farm and his ownership of it.

  “I’ll take this place over as it stands, and give you enough to clear your debts. I’ll engage a manager to run it till you get back from the coast. You must go away for six months at the very least, Turner. It doesn’t matter where you go. I’ll see that you have the money to do it. You can’t go on like this, and that is the end of it.”

  But Dick did not give in so easily. He fought for four hours. For four hours they argued, walking up and down beneath the trees.

  Charlie drove away at last without going back to the house. Dick returned to it walking heavily, almost staggering, the spring of his living destroyed. He would no longer own the farm, he would be another man’s servant. Mary was sitting in a lump in the corner of the sofa; the manner she had instinctively assumed in Charlie’s presence, to preserve appearances and to hold her own, had gone. She did not look at Dick when he came in. For days at a time she did not speak to him. It was as if he did not exist for her. She seemed to be sunk fathoms deep in some dream of her own. She only came to life, only noticed what
she was doing, when the native came in to do some little thing in the room. Then she never took her eyes off him. But what this meant Dick did not know: he did not want to know; he was beyond fighting it now.

  Charlie Slatter did not waste time. He drove round the district from farm to farm, trying to find someone who would take over the Turners’ place for a few months. He gave no explanations. He was extraordinarily reticent; he said merely that he was helping Turner to take his wife away. At last he heard of a young man just out from England, who wanted a job. Charlie did not mind who it was: anyone would do; the thing was too urgent. He at last drove into town himself to find him. He was not particularly impressed with the youth one way or the other; he was the usual type; the self-contained, educated Englishman who spoke in a la-di-da way as if he had a mouthful of pearls. He brought the young man back with him. He told him little; he did not know what to tell him. The arrangement was that he should take over the farm at once, within a week, letting the Turners go off to the coast; Charlie would arrange about the money; Charlie would tell him what to do on the farm: that was the plan. But when he went over to Dick, to tell him, he found that while he had become reconciled to the necessity of leaving, he could not be persuaded to leave at once.

  Charlie, Dick, and the young man, Tony Marston, stood in the middle of a field; Charlie hot and angry and impatient (for he could not bear to be thwarted at the best of times), Dick stubborn and miserable, Marston sensitive to the situation and trying to efface himself.

  “Damn it, Charlie, why kick me off like this? I’ve been here fifteen years!”

  “For God’s sake, man, I am not kicking you off. I want you to get off before—you should get off at once. You must see that for yourself.”

  “Fifteen years!” said Dick, his lean dark face flushed, “fifteen years!” He even bent down, unconsciously, and picked up a handful of earth, and held it in his hand, as if claiming his own. It was an absurd gesture. Charlie’s face put on a jeering little smile.