The Grass Is Singing

by Doris Lessing

  Panic plucked at her; already, before she was even dead, the bush was conquering the farm, sending its outriders to cover the good red soil with plants and grass; the bush knew she was going to die! But the young man . . . shutting out everything else she thought of him, with his warm comfort, his protecting arm. She leaned over the veranda wall, breaking off the geraniums, staring at the slopes of bush and vlei for a plume of reddish dust that would show the car was coming. But they no longer had a car; the car had been sold. . . . The strength went out of her, and she sat down, breathless, closing her eyes.

  When she opened them the light had changed, and the shadows were stretching out in front of the house. The feeling of late afternoon was in the air, and there was a sultry, dusty evening glow, a clanging bell of yellow light that washed in her head like pain. She had been asleep. She had slept through this last day. And perhaps while she slept he had come into the house looking for her? She got to her feet in a rush of defiant courage and marched into the front room. It was empty. But she knew, without any doubt at all, that he had been there while she slept, had peered through the window to see her. The kitchen door was open: that proved it. Perhaps that was what had awakened her, his being there, peering at her, perhaps even reaching out to touch her? She shrank and shivered.

  But the young man would save her. Sustained by the thought of his coming, which could not be far off now, she left the house by the back door, and walked towards his hut. Stepping over the low brick step, she bent herself into the cool interior. Oh, the coolness was so lovely, lovely on her skin! She sat on his bed, leaning her head on her hands, feeling the small coolness from the floor strike up against her feet.

  At last she jerked herself up: she must not sleep again. Along the curving wall of the hut was a row of shoes. She looked at them with wonder. Such good, smart, shoes—she hadn’t seen anything like them for years. She picked one up, feeling the shiny leather admirably, peering for the label: “John Craftsman, Edinburgh,” it said. She laughed, without knowing why. She put it down. On the floor was a big suitcase, which she could hardly lift. She tumbled it open on the floor. Books!

  Her wonder deepened. She had not seen books for so long she would find it difficult to read. She looked at the titles: Rhodes and His Influence: Rhodes and the Spirit of Africa: Rhodes and His Mission. “Rhodes,” she said vaguely, aloud. She knew nothing about him, except what she had been taught at school, which wasn’t much. She knew he had conquered a continent. “Conquered a continent,” she said aloud, proud that she had remembered the phrase after so long. “Rhodes sat on an inverted bucket by a hole in the ground, dreaming of his home in England, and of the unconquered hinterland.” She began to laugh; it seemed to her extraordinarily funny. Then she thought, forgetting about the Englishman, and Rhodes, and the books: “But I haven’t been to the store.” And she knew she must go.

  She walked along the narrow path towards it. The path now hardly existed. It was a furrow through the brush, and the grass was under her feet. A few paces from the low brick building, she stopped. There it was, the ugly store. There it was, at her death, even as it had been all her life. But it was empty; if she went in there would be nothing on the shelves, the ants were making red granulated tunnels over the counter, the walls were sheeted with spider web. But it was still here. In a sudden violent hate she banged on the door. It swung open. The store smell still clung there: it enveloped her, musty and thick and sweet.

  She stared. There he was, there in front of her, standing behind the counter as if he were serving goods, Moses the black man, standing there, looking out at her with a lazy, but threatening disdain. She gave a little cry and stumbled out, running back down the path, looking over her shoulder. The door was swinging loosely, and he did not come out. So, that was where he was waiting! She knew now that she had expected it all the time. Of course: where else could he wait, but in the hated store? She went back into the thatched hut. There was the young man, looking at her, his face puzzled, stooping over the books she had scattered over the floor, putting them back into the suitcase. No, he could not save her. She sank down on the bed, feeling sick and hopeless. There was no salvation: she would have to go through with it.

  And it seemed to her, as she looked at his puzzled, unhappy face, that she had lived through all this before. She wondered, searching through her past. Yes: long, long ago, she had turned towards another young man, a young man from a farm, when she was in trouble and had not known what to do. It had seemed to her that she would be saved from herself by marrying him. And then, she had felt this emptiness when, at last, she had known there was to be no release and that she would live on the farm till she died. There was nothing new even in her death; all this was familiar, even her feeling of helplessness.

  She rose to her feet with a queerly appropriate dignity, a dignity that left Tony speechless, for the protective pity with which he had been going to address her, now seemed useless.

  She would walk out her road alone, she thought. That was the lesson she had to learn. If she had learned it, long ago, she would not be standing here now, having been betrayed for the second time by her weak reliance on a human being who should not be expected to take the responsibility for her.

  “Mrs. Turner,” asked the young man awkwardly, “did you want to see me about something?”

  “I was,” she said. “But it’s not good: it’s not you . . .” But she could not discuss it with him. She glanced over her shoulder at the evening sky; long trails of pinkish cloud hung there, across the fading blue. “Such a lovely evening,” she said conventionally.

  “Yes. . . . Mrs. Turner, I have been talking to your husband.”

  “Have you?” she asked, politely.

  “We thought .. . I suggested that tomorrow, when you get into town, you might go and see a doctor. You are ill, Mrs. Turner.”

  “I have been ill for years,” she said tartly. “Inside, somewhere. Inside. Not ill, you understand. Everything wrong, somewhere.” She nodded to him, and stepped over the threshold. Then she turned back. “He is there,” she whispered secretively. “In there.” She nodded in the direction of the store.

  “Is he?” asked the young man dutifully, humoring her.

  She went back to the house, looking round vaguely at the little brick buildings that would soon have vanished. Where she walked, with the warm sand of the path under her feet, small animals would walk proudly through trees and grass.

  She entered the house, and faced the long vigil of her death. With deliberation and a stoical pride she sat down on the old sofa that had worn into the shape of her body, and folded her hands and waited, looking at the windows for the light to fade. But after a while she realized that Dick was seated at the table under a lighted lamp, gazing at her.

  “Have you finished packing your things?” he asked. “You know we must be gone by tomorrow morning.”

  She began to laugh. “Tomorrow!” she said. She cackled with laughter; until she saw him get up, abruptly, and go out, his hand over his face. Good, now she was alone.

  But later she watched the two men carry in plates and food, and begin to eat, sitting down opposite her. They offered her a cup of liquid which she refused impatiently, waiting for them to go. It would be over soon; soon, in a few hours it would be over. But they would not go. They seemed to be sitting there because of her. She went outside, blindly, feeling with her hands at the edge of the door. There was no lessening of the heat; the invisible dark sky bent over the house, weighing down upon it. Behind her she heard Dick say something about rain. “It will rain,” she said to herself, “after I am dead.”

  “Bed?” said Dick from the doorway, at last.

  The question seemed to have nothing to do with her; she was standing on the veranda, where she knew she would have to wait, watching the darkness for movement.

  “Come to bed, Mary!” she saw that she would first of all have to go to bed, because they would not leave her alone until she did. Automatically, she turned the lamp do
wn in the front room, and went to lock the back door. It seemed essential that the back door should be locked; she felt she must be protected from the back; the blow would come from the front. Outside the back door stood Moses, facing her. He seemed outlined in stars. She stepped back, her knees were gone to water, and locked the door.

  “He’s outside,” she remarked breathlessly to Dick, as if this was only to be expected.

  “Who is?”

  She did not reply. Dick went outside. She could hear him moving, and saw the swinging beams of light from the hurricane lamp he carried. “There is nothing there, Mary,” he said, when he returned. She nodded, in affirmation, and went again to lock the back door. Now the oblong of night was blank; Moses was not there. He would have gone into the bush, at the front of the house, she thought, in order to wait until she appeared. Back in the bedroom she stood in the middle of the floor. She might have forgotten how to move.

  “Aren’t you getting undressed?” asked Dick at last, in that hopeless, patient voice.

  Obediently she pulled off her clothes and got into bed, lying alertly awake, listening. She felt him put out a hand to touch her, and at once became inert. But he was a long way off, he did not matter to her: he was like a person on the other side of a thick glass wall.

  “Mary?” he said.

  She remained silent.

  “Mary, listen to me. You are ill. You must let me take you to the doctor.”

  It seemed to her the young Englishman was speaking; from him had originated this concern for her, this belief in her essential innocence, this absolution from guilt.

  “Of course, I am ill,” she said confidingly, addressing the Englishman. “I’ve always been ill, ever since I can remember. I am ill here.” She pointed to her chest, sitting bolt upright in bed. But her hand dropped, she forgot the Englishman, Dick’s voice sounded in her ears like the echo of a voice across a valley. She was listening to the night outside. And, slowly, the terror engulfed her which she had known must come. Once she lay down, and turned her face into the darkness of the pillows; but her eyes were alive with light, and against the light she saw a dark, waiting shape.

  She sat up again, shuddering. He was in the room, just beside her! But the room was empty. There was nothing. She heard a boom of thunder, and saw, as she had done so many times, the lightning flicker on a shadowed wall. Now it seemed as if the night were closing in on her, and the little house was bending over like a candle, melting in the heat. She heard the crack, crack; the restless moving of the iron above, and it seemed to her that a vast black body, like a human spider, was crawling over the roof, trying to get inside. She was alone. She was defenseless. She was shut in a small black box, the walls closing in on her, the roof pressing down. She was in a trap, cornered and helpless. But she would have to go out and meet him.

  Propelled by fear, but also by knowledge, she rose out of bed, not making a sound. Gradually, hardly moving, she let her legs down over the dark edge of the bed; and then, suddenly afraid of the dark gulfs of the floor, she ran to the center of the room. There she paused.

  A movement of lightning on the walls drove her forward again. She stood in the curtain folds, feeling the hairy stuff on her skin, like a hide. She shook them off, and stood poised for flight across the darkness of the front room, which was full of menacing shapes. Again the fur of animals; but this time on her feet. The long loose paw of a wildcat caught in her foot as she darted over it, so that she gave a sharp little moan of fear, and glanced over her shoulder at the kitchen door. It was locked and dark.

  She was on the veranda. She moved backwards till she was pressed against the wall. That was protected; she was standing as she should be, as she knew she had to wait. It steadied her. The fog of terror cleared from her eyes, and she could see, as the lightning flickered, that the two farm dogs were lying with lifted heads, looking at her, on the veranda. Beyond the three slim pillars, and the stiff outlines of the geranium plants, nothing could be seen until the lightning plunged again, when the crowding shoulders of the trees showed against a cloud-packed sky. She thought that as she watched they moved nearer; and she pressed back against the wall with all her strength, so that she could feel the rough brick pricking through her nightgown into her flesh. She shook her head to clear it, and the trees stood still and waited. It seemed to her that as long as she could fix her attention on them they could not creep up to her.

  She knew she must keep her mind on three things: the trees, so that they should not rush on her unawares; the door to one side of her where Dick might come; and the lightning that ran and danced, illuminating stormy ranges of cloud. Her feet firmly planted on the tepid rough brick of the floor, her back held against the wall, she crouched and stared, all her senses stretched, rigidly breathing in little gasps.

  Then, as she heard the thunder growl and shake in the trees, the sky lit up, and she saw a man’s shape move out from the dark and come towards her, gliding silently up the steps, while the dogs stood alertly watching, their tails swinging in welcome. Two yards away Moses stopped. She could see his great shoulders, the shape of his head, the glistening of his eyes. And, at the sight of him, her emotions unexpectedly shifted, to create in her an extraordinary feeling of guilt; but towards him, to whom she had been disloyal, and at the bidding of the Englishman. She felt she had only to move forward, to explain, to appeal, and the terror would be dissolved.

  She opened her mouth to speak; and, as she did so, saw his hand, which held a long curving shape, lifted above his head; and she knew it would be too late. All her past slid away, and her mouth, opened in appeal, let out the beginning of a scream, which was stopped by a black wedge of hand inserted between her jaws. But the scream continued, in her stomach, choking her; and she lifted her hands, clawlike, to ward him off. And then the bush avenged itself: that was her last thought. The trees advanced in a rush, like beasts, and the thunder was the noise of their coming. As the brain at last gave way, collapsing in a ruin of horror, she saw, over the big arm that forced her head back against the wall, the other arm descending. Her limbs sagged under her, the lightning leaped out from the dark, and darted down the plunging steel.

  Moses, letting her go, saw her roll to the floor. A steady drumming sound on the iron overhead brought him to knowledge of his surroundings, and he started up, turning his head this way and that, straightening his body. The dogs were growling at his feet, but their tails still swung; this man had fed them and looked after them; Mary had disliked them. Moses clouted them back softly, his open palm to their faces; and they stood watching him, puzzled, and whining softly.

  It was beginning to rain; big drops blew in across Moses’ back, chilling him. And another dripping sound made him look down at the piece of metal he held, which he had picked up in the bush, and had spent the day polishing and sharpening. The blood trickled off it on to the brick floor. And a curious division of purpose showed itself in his next movements. First he dropped the weapon sharply on the floor, as if in fear; then he checked himself and picked it up. He held it over the veranda wall under the now drenching downpour, and in a few moments withdrew it. Now he hesitated, looking about him. He thrust the metal in his belt, held his hands under the rain, and, cleansed, prepared to walk off through the rain to his hut in the compound, ready to protest his innocence. This purpose, too, passed. He pulled out the weapon, looked at it, and simply tossed it down beside Mary, suddenly indifferent, for a new need possessed him.

  Ignoring Dick, who was asleep through one thickness of wall, but who was unimportant, since he had been defeated long ago, Moses vaulted over the veranda wall, alighting squarely on his feet in the squelch of rain which sluiced off his shoulders, soaking him in an instant. He moved off towards the Englishman’s hut through the drenching blackness, water to his calves. At the door he peered in. It was impossible to see, but he could hear; holding his own breath, he listened intently, through the sound of the rain, for the Englishman’s breathing. But he could hear nothing. He stopped through
the doorway, and walked quietly to the bedside. His enemy, whom he had outwitted, was asleep.

  Contemptuously, the native turned away, and walked back to the house. It seemed he intended to pass it, but as he came level with the veranda he paused, resting his hand on the wall, looking over. It was black, too dark to see. He waited, for the watery glimmer of lightning to illuminate, for the last time, the small house, the veranda, the huddled shape of Mary on the brick, and the dogs who were moving restlessly about her, still whining gently, but uncertainly. It came: a prolonged drench of light, like a wet dawn. And this was his final moment of triumph, a moment so perfect and complete that it took the urgency from thoughts of escape, leaving him indifferent.

  When the dark returned he took his hand from the wall, and walked slowly off through the rain towards the bush. Though what thoughts of regret, or pity, or perhaps even wounded human affection were compounded with the satisfaction of his completed revenge, it is impossible to say. For, when he had gone perhaps a couple of hundred yards through the soaking bush he stopped, turned aside, and leaned against a tree on an ant heap. And there he would remain, until his pursuers, in their turn, came to find him.

  P.S.

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  About the author

  Meet Doris Lessing

  DORIS LESSING was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919. Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Doris’s mother adapted to the rough life of the settlement, energetically trying to reproduce what was, in her view, a “civilized” Edwardian life among “savages,” but her father did not, and the thousand- odd acres of bush he had bought failed to yield the promised wealth.