When Rain Clouds Gather

by Bessie Head

  By this time, Maria had already reached the home of Mma-Millipede. She found her alone, reading the Tswana version of the Bible.

  She was a little apprehensive as the door was pushed open and Maria stepped in, especially as a visit from Maria was rare, and then the child just stood there, a little breathless, flustered and tongue-tied.

  “Batho! What’s the matter, my child?” she asked anxiously.

  “Papa sent me to tell you I am to marry Gilbert tomorrow.”

  “But why the haste?” said Mma-Millipede, quite taken aback.

  Maria sat down. “There’s no haste, Mama,” she said, in her earnest way. “It’s I who have delayed matters. Gilbert has asked me to marry him for three years.”

  “Does Papa agree?” the old woman asked.

  Maria nodded and Mma-Millipede smiled inwardly, pleased that all her conjectures were at last confirmed. But curiosity overcame her and she said, “Three years is a long time to delay a marriage, my child. Gilbert might have become impatient and run away to England; then not only would you have lost him, but we too.”

  Maria stared at the old woman with small withdrawn eyes and shook her head a little helplessly. How could Mma-Millipede expect to understand all the complications of life? She placed one small straight hand on the table, a way she had of showing that sentiment should always be separated from facts.

  “Gilbert is a man with many strange ways,” she said crisply. “A person has to get used to these strange ways. For some time now he has kept a lizard in the house whom he treats as a person and which is now accustomed to being spoken to like a person. Its name is Skin. Each night it is put down beside the lamp to have a meal off the insects that gather there. Also, I have often seen it asleep on the pillow, like a child, with its legs spread out. Gilbert does not live in this world but in some world about which I know nothing.”

  Mma-Millipede nodded her head slowly, with an expression on her face which clearly said: Oh, People, is that what foreign men are like?

  “Are you sure you want to marry, my child?” she asked, kindly.

  The young girl shrugged, helplessly. “I don’t know my own mind, Mama,” she said, in despair. “I don’t know what I want. You must help me.”

  “But you help yourself with your understanding, my child,” the old woman said. “As you know, we all live in a world that is full of danger. If a person cannot see this, he must be protected from the danger.”

  Maria stared meditatively at the table. “I thought so too, Mama,” she said slowly. “I don’t care about myself, but nothing must harm Gilbert.”

  These words suddenly relieved Mma-Millipede of the burden of sentiment that was clouding her practical mind.

  “There is so much to do,” she said. “And so little time. We have to give a party. How often is there a wedding? Once in a blue moon. More likely it is death or ailments that bring people together. Two or three goats will have to be slaughtered and some chickens for high diet. I am out of rice. Has Papa any rice?”

  “We have plenty, Mama,” the young girl said.

  “And what about a pretty dress in which to get married?” Mma-Millipede said. “Never mind, we shall buy it tomorrow.”

  She sat for a moment, ticking off the items in her mind. The goats would have to be slaughtered early in the morning and then hung up to drain. No doubt she would have to accompany her old friend to the wedding ceremony, and there was only one other woman in the village capable of managing the party arrangements while she was away – Paulina Sebeso. She stood up, searched for an old jacket, and, accompanied by Maria, walked to the home of her friend, Paulina.

  They passed the farm and the lamp still burned in Makhaya’s hut, and the two men still chatted like ancient blood brothers. They passed another home where the old man sat, staring pensively into the fire, contemplating the twists and turns of a long life which might end any day now, he thought, since his last and youngest child was about to marry. But if Dinorego thought about death near his softly glowing fire, Paulina Sebeso thought about life and how to have it more abundantly. And the bright crackling flames of her fire danced upward into the black sky. She sprang to her feet as the old woman and the young woman approached.

  “I have a surprise,” Mma-Millipede said.

  And once she heard what it was, Paulina Sebeso turned round and too vigorously pushed a log into the fire. She did this to cover up her confusion, and the disturbed fire sent sparks in all directions. Paulina was unashamedly joyful that a stroke of luck had removed her deadliest competitor.

  Seven

  Early the next morning, at the home of Mma-Millipede, bedlam reigned. The women of the village were there, and two goats, slaughtered and skinned, hung up by the feet from a tree to drain off the excess blood. Until the blood flowed down to a trickle, there was nothing much for the women to do except stand as close to each other as possible and create the most ear-splitting din. This whole process is sometimes known as talking, but it has been said that it is only Basotho women who outmatch Batswana women at this art; that is, you stand about a foot away from your companion, heaye up your chest, puff up the side veins of the neck and then let all you have inside you come out, full blast. Somehow you laugh at the same time, and unusual this sound is too, as though all the glass in the world were being hurled into a deep pit and shrieking in agony. This noise attracted all the goats in the village to the home of Mma-Millipede, for they knew from long experience that it was the signal for a thousand potato peels to fall on the ground. They added to the din by fighting, pushing and bleating for the best positions. And, of course, Botswana is one of the greatest tea-drinking countries in the world, so that the clatter of over a hundred teacups added the final touch to the shattering symphony.

  Everyone had brought along a little something to put into the pot. Mostly it was potatoes, and these little gifts were tied up in gay blue, red and yellow checkered cloths and hung from the waists of the women, and these checkered splashes of colour swayed about as they talked. At a sign from Paulina, an abrupt and deathly silence fell on the gathering. A few women moved forward and sliced out the hard fat that had surrounded the intestines of the animals and which, when heated, melted down into oil. This fat was divided into equal portions and placed in two large iron pots which stood near the fire. On top of this fat they poured small packets of curry powder. Another group of women advanced on the slaughtered goats and, within a short space of time, sliced away all the meat, leaving behind the bony skeleton. The meat, fat, and curry powder then boiled away in big pots. Everyone moved over to small wooden tables, on the top of each of which was placed a basin containing water; and then, with strained, absorbed faces, the women peeled the potatoes, tossing them one by one into the basins. Even the goats quieted down, absorbed in munching the peels with their small dainty mouths.

  A shrill high-pitched voice, the owner of which was carefully submerged in the group, broke the silence. “I am wondering about the foreigner who has recently come to the farm,” it said.

  Since everyone had been wondering too, everyone kept quiet.

  “Who knows if he is married?” the shrill voice persisted.

  “Why don’t you direct your questions to Paulina Sebeso?” a voice at the farthest end of the crowd shouted, and then, with a hint of sarcasm, added, “After all, she’s the big brains around here.”

  Everyone turned and stared at Paulina, and she had caught the slight edge of sarcasm and was angry yet remained calm.

  “I know nothing,” she said, in a deliberately flat voice.

  “But you have eyes, Paulina Sebeso,” the sarcastic one continued, “You must have noticed that the foreigner is very handsome.”

  Paulina turned and stared at her tormentor. The owner of the sarcastic voice was Grace Sebina, a rough, wild, promiscuous woman. They had been at loggerheads for some time.

  “If your eyes chase all the men, Grace Sebina,” she said crisply, “please don’t put them on me.”

  All the women
stared at each other in shock. It wasn’t polite to call a prostitute a prostitute in black and white terms.

  “You don’t have to be so rude, Paulina Sebeso,” one of the older women said, reprovingly. “Grace Sebina is portraying our own thoughts. We all think the foreigner is handsome. We only want to know if you think the same.”

  Paulina stood there and bit on her tongue, too late, while they all stared at her innocently. It was bait-talk. It had been planned. They all had permanent lovers or husbands while Paulina Sebeso had none, and even a tradition was forming about her. A few men had said she was too bossy. Then they all said it, overlooking the fact that they were wilting, effeminate shadows of men who really feared women. Things went along smoothly as long as all the women pretended to be inferior to this spineless species. The women had been lying to themselves for so long in their sexual frustration that they would not admit the real reason why Paulina dominated them all was because she was the kind of woman who could not lie to men. They followed the leadership of Paulina because she was so daring and different. It would have upset their world to have Paulina find a man she could get along with. They were determined to keep her trapped in a frustration far greater than their own. In fact, on several occasions, this powerful little clique had stepped in and with a few poisonous, cunning words destroyed tentative friendships. The innocent glances were therefore a challenge. Would she make a bid for the foreigner? And if so, was she prepared to face the consequences?

  Paulina turned and stirred one of the pots with a big wooden stick. It wasn’t the women and their intriguing she feared but the untrustworthiness of men with no strength or moral values. It was as though a whole society had connived at producing a race of degenerate men by stressing their superiority in the law and overlooking how it affected them as individuals. These things Paulina felt intuitively, but had not thought out in a coherent form. Strangely enough, she now began to look with hope upon the event of the previous evening, when Makhaya had spurned her gesture of friendship. If he had walked straight into her yard on her invitation, she reasoned, might he not too have walked into every other woman’s yard?

  So when the older, reproving woman said, “We see, Paulina Sebeso, you have no words to defend yourself?” she turned round and smiled.

  “What can I say, Mama,” she said, “I have seen the foreigner about in the village. It seems to me he has big ears, and I don’t see how a man with such big ears can be handsome.”

  The women turned and looked at each other with meaningful glances as much as to say: We are not so easily fooled by you, Paulina Sebeso.

  Paulina was not like the women of Golema Mmidi, although she had been born into their kind of world and fed on the same diet of thin maize porridge by a meek, repressed, dull-eyed mother. But even as a small child she kept on putting her nose into everything. “What’s this, Mama?” she’d say, with a face screwed up with fun and mischief. She was so lively and meddlesome that her mother constantly kept a little switch nearby, and it was quite a common sight in her village to see Paulina racing through the thornbush with her mother hard on her heels, waving the switch. Because of this early practice, once she attended school she became one of the fastest runners on sports competition days. Her athletic ability had ensured her more education than most of the women in the village, and it was only the prospect of a secure and stable marriage that had made her discontinue attending school. But throughout her life she had retained her fresh, lively curiosity and ability to enter an adventure, head first. It was all this that really distinguished her from the rest of the women, even though her circumstances and upbringing were no different from theirs.

  She had travelled a longer way, too, on the road of life, as unexpected suffering always makes a human being do, and yet her thoughts were as uncertain and intangible as the blue smoke of the fires which unfurled into the still winter air and disappeared like vapour. Caught up in this pensive mood, she hardly saw basin after basin of potatoes being pitched into the huge pots, yet she continued to stir the food with quick vigorous thrusts of the wooden spoon, and she hardly heard the women chattering about the marriage ceremony, which was taking place at that moment in the untidy office of George Appleby-Smith. (George, like the women, felt it to be an ordinary and natural outcome of events, because everything the unusual Gilbert did seemed to be harmonious and acceptable like the sunrise and sunsets. George had only added a little drama and humour of his own. His office had not been swept out for some days, and he had kept the wedding party waiting while, with a straight expressionless face, he swept the room out.)

  “I say, Paulina Sebeso,” one of the women said, “you’re letting the chickens burn.”

  Paulina started and poured a little water into a smaller pot in which two chickens were roasting in their own fat, and for a time, the chatter of the women imposed itself on the tangled wisps of her thoughts…

  “But I must say the daughter of Dinorego is a lucky devil,” someone said enviously. “From now on she will live in comfort, as white men know how to make money, not like our men who don’t like work.”

  “Do you suppose she had this comfort foremost in mind?” someone else asked.

  “You can’t tell with Maria,” the other replied. “She’s too clever.”

  Since Paulina also shared this envy of Maria’s strange, unfathomable personality and was guilty about it, she turned on the speakers, wrathfully, “I don’t like people to discuss a person who is not present.”

  “Goodness!” Paulina Sjebeso, one of the speakers said with an injured air. “You are in a cross mood today. Are you perhaps pregnant?”

  But Paulina’s reply was drowned in shrieks of laughter, and even Paulina herself stood there laughing in confusion at herself. Many strange moods possessed her this day, as though, through some premonition, she was being warned that her whole way of life was about to change.

  The change itself was to be a devious, subtle one, the threads of which were woven by three people who were to walk into the yard a few hours later: Gilbert, Mma-Millipede, and Makhaya. Of the three it was only Makhaya who was vitally necessary to her existence. Mma-Millipede’s spur-of-the-moment wedding party for everyone drew together the first few strands, which in turn were to draw in hundreds of other strands, affecting the whole future pattern of life in Golema Mmidi. But it was all in the air that day and was in part responsible for Paulina’s changeable moods, her pensiveness and unfamiliar uncertainty. She was relieved, therefore, when at noon she stepped back from the cooking pots and seated herself on a stool in the shadow of a hut. A group of women, who had been idle, stepped up to the pots, getting ready to supervise the dishing up of the food when the wedding party returned.

  Shortly after this, the five farm workers and Pelotona, the permit man, walked into the yard, followed a little later by Mma-Millipede, Dinorego, and Maria. Maria looked much put out by being the centre of attention for the day, because she was essentially a quiet and humble personality. It all made her pretty, serious face more serious than usual, and she was at pains to conceal herself behind the ample figure of Mma-Millipede. Not even her new frock of pale blue cotton, sprigged with small pale pink roses, could boost Maria’s morale. The women of the village also put on constrained masks as they walked about serving the food in silence. They only let themselves go when they were a group together with no men present.

  After a slight delay, Gilbert and Makhaya also walked into the yard, absorbed in a conversation. At least, Gilbert was doing the talking and Makhaya the listening. Since she had only waited for the appearance of Makhaya, Paulina looked up and stared at him in a still, intent, almost dispassionate way. She noted how he never once looked at the face of the speaker but kept wrapped up in himself and walked as though he was a single, separate and aloof entity. And yet at the same time he concentrated so intensely on what was being said to him that he seemed to have established an invisible bond between himself and the speaker. Then Gilbert seemed to say something that indicated the end o
f the conversation and, picking up a hand-carved stool, walked over and sat down on the right side of Mma-Millipede, who had Maria sitting on her left. Makhaya, in turn, looked around the gathering with a slight expression of surprise on his face, as if his absorption in Gilbert’s conversation had made him unaware of his surroundings. Paulina’s heart turned over at this, and she bent her head and smiled to herself.

  The old man, Dinorego, touched Makhaya on the arm and indicated a vacant seat next to him. Makhaya sat down.

  “You know, son,” Dinorego said confidingly, “I thought the day I met you: ‘Well, here is a most suitable man to marry my daughter.’ Today, I cannot recover from my surprise, although I am very pleased that she is married to Gilbert. It means he will make his home here and we shall progress.”

  Makhaya merely laughed in reply, especially at the latter part of the old man’s speech. Moralizing seemed to be Dinorego’s speciality.

  “And what about you, son?” the old man continued. “Might you not like to marry here too?”

  Makhaya turned his head and looked at the old man, directly, half-amused, half-serious.

  “Most men want to achieve great victories,” he said. “But I am only looking for a woman.”

  The old man nodded his head profoundly, but at the same time he sensed snags in that simple statement. Makhaya appeared to him too complicated a man to have such straightforward desires.

  “Might she be very educated or might she not be educated, son?” he asked.

  “I know what I want, Papa,” Makhaya said quietly. “Because I’ve had so much of what I did not want.”

  The old man said nothing but stared thoughtfully into the distance. There were things in Makhaya he would never understand because his own environment was one full of innocence. The terrors of rape, murder and bloodshed in a city slum, which was Makhaya’s background, were quite unknown to Dinorego, but he felt in Makhaya’s attitude and utterances a horror of life, and it was as though he was trying to flee this horror and replace it with innocence, trust, and respect. In many ways, Gilbert’s background was much closer to that of Dinorego’s than was Makhaya’s, because it contained this same innocence and a lack of understanding of evil. Still, Dinorego was an old man, governed by his own strange rules, and in the short space of time he had known him, he felt a closer bond with Makhaya, the way God usually feels towards the outcast beggar rolling in the dust.