When Rain Clouds Gather

by Bessie Head

  Prostitutes, he was to decide, were the best type of women you’d find among all black women, unless a man wanted to be trapped for life by a dead thing. A prostitute laughed. She established her own kind of equality with men. She picked up a wide, vicarious experience that made her chatter in a lively way, and she was so used to the sex organs of men that she was inclined to regard him as a bit more than a sex organ. Not so the dead thing most men married. Someone told that dead thing that a man was only his sex organs and functioned as such. Someone told her that she was inferior in every way to a man, and she had been inferior for so long that even if a door opened somewhere, she could not wear this freedom gracefully. There was no balance between herself and a man. There was nothing but this quiet, contemptuous, know-all silence between herself, the man and his functioning organs. And everyone called this married life, even the filthy unwashed children, the filthy unwashed floors, and piles of unwashed dishes. Before all this Makhaya retreated, repelled. Yet his other life was horrible too, and he would not have been able to maintain it indefinitely without becoming a complete wreck. Perhaps he had even subconsciously engineered his arrest at this time by carelessly keeping the plans to blow up a power station in his pocket.

  It was to amaze Makhaya after all this that an old woman in the village of Golema Mmidi, named Mma-Millipede, was to relieve his heart of much of its ashes, frustration, and grief.

  Mma-Millipede made the first move towards establishing a friendship with Makhaya, partly motivated by her liking for the quiet, reserved young man and partly through her involvement in the emotional life of her friend Paulina. One evening, as Makhaya sat at supper with Maria, Gilbert, and the old man Dinorego, he was handed a little note by Dinorego. It said:

  I would be very pleased if you could pay me a visit, my son. Everyone ignores an old woman like me, therefore I am ever lonely. Your friend, Mma-Millipede.

  It was a bit of an exaggeration on the part of Mma-Millipede, but Makhaya put the note in his pocket; and as soon as supper was over, he stood up, leaving Gilbert and the old man in the middle of a discussion about whether, in the end, subsistence farming would evolve into co-operative farming. He liked this one theme of Gilbert’s, but he also liked the tone of the little note.

  Mma-Millipede was a little surprised at the promptness with which Makhaya responded to her note, and quite a space lapsed before she could collect her thoughts. She had, as usual, been indulging in her favourite pastime – reading the Tswana version of the Bible, and on this particular evening the wandering tribes of Israel were being settled by Joseph in the land of the Pharaoh.

  “…lo, here is seed for you,” Joseph was saying. “And ye shall sow the land. And it shall come to pass in the increase, that ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households, and for food for your little ones…”

  These words deeply touched the heart of Mma-Millipede. It was her own world. It was Botswana. In her childhood a custom had prevailed where one-fifth part of the harvest of the corn had been given to the chief, and he had taken his one-fifth part of all the gifts and it had been brewed into a beer from which all had sipped as a thanksgiving for the harvest. But what had Pharaoh done with the gifts of the tribes of Israel? For they were lonely in Pharaoh’s land and Jacob, the ancient father of Joseph, calls his son and says: “I pray thee, my son. Bury me not in Pharaoh’s land. Carry me out and bury me in the burying place of my fathers…”

  Mma-Millipede was about to weep at the loneliness and unease of the ancient Jacob. She saw and felt it all vividly but at this moment Makhaya knocked at the door, and his tall, thin shadow stepped ahead of him into the candlelit hut. His sensitive eye took in at one glance the little black Bible and the loneliness and grief of the old woman.

  “Hullo, Mama,” he said with his quiet smile.

  The old woman stared up at him, confusing him with the image of Joseph which was still in her mind.

  “I am surprised you visit an ugly old woman,” she said at last, smiling too.

  “But you called me, sweetheart,” he teased back. “Besides, I’ve visited many types of women but none have looked as lovely as you.”

  “Oh, this pleases my heart,” the old woman said, with quaint dignity. “Who has ever called me sweetheart before? Will you have some tea, my own sweetheart?”

  She fussed about unnecessarily, and looked a little flustered as her heart was suddenly overcome with a sentimental liking for Makhaya, and sentiment was not really a part of Mma-Millipede’s temperament, at least it was buried deep down under all the harsh realities she had faced in her long life. Makhaya sat down opposite her and pulled the Tswana version of the Bible towards him as she poured the tea. He scarcely glanced at the words.

  “Are you religious, Mama?” he asked lightly.

  Mma-Millipede looked at him with an alert glance. “If you mean, am I good, I can right away say no, no, no,” she said. “Goodness is impossible to achieve. I am searching for a faith, without which I cannot live.”

  Makhaya kept quiet because he did not immediately grasp the meaning of this.

  “What is faith, Mama?” he asked curiously.

  “It is an understanding of life,” she said gently.

  He looked at her for a moment and then placed one long black arm on the table and pulled up the sweater sleeve which was the same pitch black colouring as the skin on his arm.

  “Do you mean this too?” he asked, quietly. “Do you know who I am? I am Makhaya, the Black Dog, and as such I am tossed about by life. Life is only torture and torment to me and not something I care to understand.”

  He might have said it was much more than torture and torment, that it was an abysmal betrayal, a howling inferno where every gesture of love and respect was repaid with the vicious, snapping jaws of the inmates of this inferno until you were forced to build a thick wall of silence between yourself and the snapping jaws. But he would throttle himself to death behind this wall because love was really a warm outflowing stream which could not be dammed up. The familiar pained expression crept over his face as he looked at the old woman. And the old woman knew this.

  “What is a Black Dog?” she asked abruptly.

  Makhaya laughed his bitter, sarcastic laugh. “He is a sensation,” he said. “He awakens only thrills in the rest of mankind. He is a child they scold in a shrill voice because they think he will never grow up. They don’t want him to, either, because they’ve grown too used to his circus and his antics, and they liked the way he sat on the chair and shivered in fear while they lashed out with the whip. If Black Dog becomes human they won’t have anyone to entertain them any more. Yet all the while they shrieked with laughter over his head, he slowly became a mad dog. Instead of becoming human, he has only become a mad dog, and this makes them laugh louder than ever.”

  Mma-Millipede looked down. The quietly spoken words carried in them a violent torrent of hatred, and she was swept out of her depth, uncertain if there was anything in her own life with which to counter this hatred. The pitch black arm still lay across the table, like a question mark, and she was pitch black too, but she had lived all her life inside this black skin with a quiet and unruffled dignity.

  “You are not a Black Dog, my own sweetheart,” she said in despair. “I have never seen such a handsome man as you in my life before. You must not be fooled by those who think they are laughing. I don’t know these people but my search for a faith has taught me that life is a fire in which each burns until it is time to close the shop.”

  She looked up at Makhaya and he stared back at her aloofly. With that aloof stare he was trying to force something out of the old woman as he began to feel the real hard depth at the centre of her life. Mma-Millipede wavered. She had wanted to chat with him about little things; how he liked his work and whether he wanted a woman. But now all her feelers had to concentrate themselves on this frightening depth of hatred he had revealed in himsel
f. He smiled suddenly, quite clearly observing the uncertainty on her face.

  “Maybe you are right, Mama,” he said. “Maybe I blame the whole world for my own private troubles. Maybe it’s just a hollow feeling inside that’s driving me mad.”

  He pointed to the direction of his heart. “There is a hollow feeling here,” he continued. “Some time ago I used to pour all the drink in the world into it to try and fill it up. I was dissatisfied with myself. That’s what hollow inside means.”

  “My own sweetheart,” she said, tenderly. “The hollow feeling inside is a search for a faith because that is what a person cannot live without.”

  “Can you look on life again with trust once it has become soiled and tainted?” he asked.

  The old woman looked at his face. Perhaps he did not know it but the unconscious expression of his face was one of innocence and trust. How was it possible for him to have looked on evil and yet to have retained that expression?

  “You are a good man, my son,” she said with firm assertiveness.

  “What makes you see good in everything?” he asked, amused.

  “It is because of the great burden of life,” she said quietly. “You must learn only one thing. You must never, never put anyone away from you as not being your brother. Because of this great burden, no one can be put away from you.”

  It was the first, of all that she had said, that immediately touched the depth of his own life. Makhaya understood anything that appealed to his generosity because, in the depths of him, he was a lover of his fellow men. Yet the savagery and greed of these fellow men had set him to flight. At the same time the experiences of all forms of twisted, perverted viciousness had knocked out of him most of these evils. The problem was to control this desire for flight for, in turn, it became an act of hatred against all mankind.

  “Who is my brother, Mama?” he asked.

  “It is each person who is alive on the earth,” she said.

  He smiled, having half-expected that reply from the old woman, and he had a perverse desire to push the Tswana version of the Bible off the table. The woman had a fire inside her that radiated outward and he could feel it and it warmed him. He didn’t like that little black book because it really meant damn-all to a black man like him. Too many mincing, squeamish little missionaries had danced around it, and if God was to mean anything to a Black Dog he just had to have the humility to put on the skin of the Black Dog. He just had to go around being black in Africa if, from now on, he wanted anyone to care about him. But Makhaya cared not two hells about an old man in the sky. He liked this direct people-caring and this warm fire in an old woman. He sat up a little because he wanted to jolt her a bit. He wanted to find out what the base was, if it was real or only an illusion.

  “I don’t think I understand you,” he said. “I don’t think I accept the other man as my brother. You know what’s going on in Golema Mmidi? Well, the same thing is going on wherever there are poor people. Chief Matenge is one lout, cheat, dog, swine. But Matenges everywhere get themselves into a position over the poor. I hate the swine. Sometimes I don’t know what I feel about the poor, except that I, being poor too, say I’ve had enough of swines. I say I’ve had enough of those tin gods called white men, too. I want to see them blow up but I’ve run away, not because they are my brothers, but because a crowd is going to do the blowing up. I don’t like crowds. I’d like to kill if I had to but I’m not sure what I’m killing when I’m in a crowd. I’m not sure of anything any more, least of all who my brother is.”

  Mma-Millipede searched her mind in vain. There was a judgment day when the sheep would be separated from the goats, without Makhaya’s help, and she was searching around in her mind for a way to inform him of this without having to refer to the Bible. It was something people liked or did not like and she knew this wild-hearted man did not like it. She knew missionaries too and they had tainted the Bible by not making the words they preached out of it match their deeds.

  “Maybe I don’t see life in a big way,” she said apologetically. “But people who err against human life like our chief and the white man do so only because they are more blind than others to the mystery of life. Some time life will catch up with them and put them away for good or change them. It’s not the white man who makes life but a deeper mystery over which he has no control. Whether good or bad, each man is helpless before life. This struck my heart with pity. Since I see all this with my own eyes, I could not add to the burden by causing sorrow to others. I could only help. That is why I cannot put anyone away from me as not being my brother.”

  Makhaya smiled wryly. He had not heard anything like this before, and he hadn’t expected to hear it from an old woman in the Botswana bush. He hadn’t expected anyone to tell him that generosity of mind and soul was real, and Mma-Millipede sustained this precious quality at a pitch too intense for him to endure. He could give up almost anything, and hatred might fall away from him like old scabs, but he would never stop putting people away from him. He would never let them rampage through his soul because, unlike Mma-Millipede, he had no God to clear up the rubble. He had only his own self, Makhaya, Black Dog, and that was all he trusted not to let him down. He stood up soon after that, with all Mma-Millipede’s treasures in his pocket. He was never to know how to thank her for confirming his view that everything in life depended on generosity. The relationship between them from then on was to be one of continuous give and take, and who took and who gave and when and how was never counted up. Still Mma-Millipede was strangely disturbed that evening. It had been one of the most exacting conversations of her life, especially as her thoughts on life, on understanding were always hesitant, tentative. Yet on this evening she had spoken with calm authority on truths she was unaware of having thought deeply about. Partly it was the strangeness of the person she had spoken to which had so shaken her. She had been unprepared for the violent intensity of hatred and turmoil behind the quiet, still, carved face, and partly too it was the abrupt way in which she had been brought too close to another human life for the first time in her life. He had sat there, seemingly aloof and alone, yet at the same time, he had caught hold of an invisible thread of her life and attached it to his own. This togetherness dissolved all the loneliness in the world, and it had given Mma-Millipede the confidence to utter words she would never have dreamt of in the ordinary way. Mma-Millipede was left with the feeling that a rich treasure had entered her life. She sat there for a long while with her hand on her cheek, pondering these things.

  Why did he call himself Black Dog and then give her such a terrifying picture of what a Black Dog was, she puzzled. How could a young man who had awakened such a quiet affection in her heart be himself so tormented and broken? But how could Mma-Millipede understand all things? Apart from one or two missionaries and Gilbert, she had never known white people. She had never had to live with a twisted perverted mentality which pinned up little notices over a whole town that said: This town is for white people only. Black Dogs may only enter through the back door because they are our servants and we are God, permanently, perpetually. We are this way because we have white skins, like peaches and cream. We don’t smell like Black Dogs do and we are also very clever. We invented machinery. We, we, we.

  It was hard to be charitable towards a civilization like this. It was hard to sit back and contemplate the real wonder of the white man’s world which was this civilization. As Makhaya walked back to the farm in the pitch dark night he was even sorry that he had once more aroused his own deep and bitter hatred. For he hated the white man in a strange way. It was not anything subtle or sly or mean, but a powerful accumulation of years and years and centuries and centuries of silence. It was as though, in all this silence, black men had not lived nor allowed themselves an expression of feeling. But they had watched their lives overrun and everything taken away. They were like Frankenstein monsters, only animated by the white man for his own needs. Otherwise they had no life apart from being servants and slaves. The strain was
too much to bear any longer, not when a man was under pressure to assert his own manhood. He wanted them to give way on the continent of Africa, for they understood everything except the life inside a man. If this were not so they would have accepted the fact that black men were human too and not some strange animal they tarred and feathered and hung up from a tree to die. He wanted them to give way on a continent where nearly everyone wore no shoes and where poverty was not a shameful sin to be hidden under the bushes. More than that he wanted them to remove their guns which at this present time in southern Africa were pointed at millions and millions of unarmed people. They must know what would happen one day in southern Africa. They must know, somewhere deep down, that one day all those millions of unarmed people would pitch themselves bodily on the bullets, if that was the only way of ridding themselves of an oppressor.

  The whole world knew this. There was this curious philosophy.

  “Violence breeds hatred and hatred breeds violence. Hatred can only be defeated by love and peace.”

  But had Hitler been defeated by love and peace? Six million Jews had quietly died before Jewish people earned the right to live on this earth. Had six million Africans to die in southern Africa before black men earned a dignity too? The philosophy of love and peace strangely overlooked who was in possession of the guns. There had been love and peace for some time on the continent of Africa because for all this time black men had been captivated by the doctrines of Christianity. It took them centuries to realize its contradictions, and Mma-Millipede’s generation was the last of the captivated generations. The contradictions were apparent to Makhaya, and perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. It seemed to Makhaya far preferable for Africa if it did without Christianity and Christian double-talk, fat priests, golden images, and looked around at all the thin naked old men who sat under trees weaving baskets with shaking hands. People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feeling of self-responsibility for the crimes they committed. This seemed to Makhaya the greatest irony of Christianity. It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion like that.