When Rain Clouds Gather

by Bessie Head

  “The boy is dead,” he said sharply. “Why do you want to go in?”

  “I must see the body,” she said, but with dry, taut lips. “I must see the body because it is our custom.”

  “You see,” he said, in a deliberately harsh voice. “All these rotten customs are killing us. Can’t you see I’m here to bear all your burdens? Come on.”

  And he walked towards the car, knowing she would meekly follow him. He stood nearby and waited until she had climbed in, then he turned, almost with relief, to Gilbert, who sat at the wheel of the car with an ashen face.

  “Is the boy dead, too?” Gilbert said.

  “Yes,” Makhaya said shortly, and he had no idea that the hurt expression was still on his face. It was like having a smudge there and not knowing you had it. As though, Gilbert thought, he wanted to feel for everyone and get the matter over with. A small light of friendship and understanding stirred in Gilbert’s eyes, and sensing this Makhaya spoke so trustingly to him:

  “We don’t know what has caused the death of the child, my friend,” he said. “So, we will have to call the police. Could you please take my wife home and notify the police at the same time? I’ll remain behind.”

  These few simple words put new life into Gilbert. He nodded briefly and turned the car round, and he and Paulina drove back in the direction of Golema Mmidi. Makhaya was left alone with the vultures. Surrounded by tragedy and seated in the shade of a ramshackle mud hut in the Botswana bush, he began to see himself. In retrospect he seemed a small-minded man. All his life he had wanted some kind of Utopia, and he had rejected in his mind and heart a world full of ailment and faults. He had run and run away from it, but now the time had come when he could run and hide no longer and would have to turn round and face all that he had run away from. Loving one woman had brought him to this realization: that it was only people who could bring the real rewards of living, that it was only people who give love and happiness.

  As though to confirm his new trend of thought, he stirred a foot and found it brushed against a bundle of something carefully tied up. He opened the bundle and in it was a collection of wood carvings, done by the small boy to occupy himself during the lonely hours of cattle herding. Among the assortment he picked up a thick porridge spoon, one and a half feet in length. A great deal of effort had been put into the production of this spoon. The small boy had probably intended it to be a gift to his mother. He had decorated the long handle with the twisting pattern of a snake’s scaly body, and almost every detail, right up to the venomous eyes, had been reproduced. The design was bold and vivid and he had burned it into the wood with a red-hot piece of iron. Makhaya looked at it for some time, struggling to capture a living image of a child he did not know. He hoped he and Paulina would never create a child who would be expected to carry burdens beyond his age.

  All the other carvings concerned themselves with the animals the small boy had observed in his surroundings, wild bucks, tortoises, monkeys, and birds. The birds were carved into a majestic, charcoal boat, and a half a dozen of them sat tail to tail with their heads in the air, like kings. One carving in particular aroused Makhaya’s curiosity. The piece of wood was not more than six inches in length, and half of the grain was a livid flesh colour and the other was snow white. Out of this the boy had carved a minute crocodile with the same attention to detail as the snake design. Where had the boy seen a crocodile? There were none along the eastern border area where the cattle grazed. And the surrounding area was thornbush forest, and the tiny piece of wood was a foreigner to the area.

  He bent to tie up the bundle and the slight clatter of wood against wood made him look up at a comical drama that was played out barely six inches away from him. A wild jackal had been swiftly approaching the graveyard of cattle, and thinking himself alone with the vultures, he had concentrated his whole mind on his forthcoming meal. The unexpected noise brought him to a dead halt, and his first reaction was one of abject fear.

  Looking neither left nor right, he almost slunk into the ground and then, a moment later, lifted one right paw in pathetic, pitiful apology, at the same time baring his sharp, jagged teeth in a savage snarl. Since the snarl went unchallenged, the poor thing quickly recovered itself and swivelled its foxy face in Makhaya’s direction. The sun was behind the jackal, but as he turned, its reflection shone in his beautiful amber eyes in honey-gold flashes. He had a soft, thick, honey-gold coat too, with a contrasting streak of silver and black fur down his back. He stood for a few seconds, eyeing Makhaya fearfully and then turned and bounded away into the bush. It occurred to Makhaya that a wild animal was more afraid of man than a man need be of it, and its one thought was to retreat as far from man as possible. It seemed to him that in essence most of his reactions had been like those of the jackal, from the day he had been born. For some time his mouth quivered with amusement at the strange antics of the wild animal. Maybe that panic-stricken beast had a jackal society where he felt sane and secure, but no human society was sane and normal. Yet he needed to come to terms with his society because he needed a woman and children.

  He could not go on thinking of the heap of bones that lay inside the hut, because death was like trying to clutch the air, and you had to let it be and slowly let it pass aside, without fuss and indignity. Instead, you had to concentrate the mind on all that was still alive and treat it as the most precious treasure you had ever been given. Besides, he had felt all the pain he was capable of feeling the night before, and it had directed his actions along this new path. So, he sat there thinking about his new life with Paulina. Even ordinary things like cups, brooms, pots, and houses were a pleasure to him to contemplate, once he had become aware of their existence, as though all these things would anchor him firmly to the earth. They also strengthened his resolve to be a future millionaire, for many a future millionaire must have had a dead child in his life who had died from lack of proper food, and he must have had a one-room hut in which he could hardly move and breathe. He must have lain awake at night, craving a four-room house with a kitchen, bathroom and taps, and mentally clothed this house with ornaments, chairs and beds, and he must have said he would always spend five pounds but get ten pounds back as change. If a man didn’t have dreams like this, in Africa, he would end up food for the vultures too.

  These horrible creatures guzzled and guzzled, seeming to have bottomless appetites. The wind swept huge columns of sand up into the sky, which carried the odour of death with it and brought more vultures, in thick, black patrols. They swooped down with their big wings outstretched like supersonic jets. Some of the fully gorged birds made way for the newcomers, flying up into the thorn trees and adorning the bare branches in monstrous, silent, carved postures. Even the wind blew according to its own mad pattern. For hours tiny gusts flew in harassed circles around the thornbush until they all converged into a roaring turmoil of air and red dust which would race madly for a mile or so along the earth and then sweep up and disperse itself in the sky.

  Makhaya stood up at last, sickened by the ceaseless clack, clack of the vultures’ beaks. Away from the little hut and the vultures was the endless, dead vista of scorched earth and twisted dry thornbush. He leaned against a dead tree and closed his eyes, all his capacity for thought slowly seeping out of him. This bush on all sides was the most awful life imaginable, and it occurred to Makhaya that it must have been this unrelieved, heavy isolation which had driven the lively-minded Dinorego out of the cattle business. Yet thousands of people lived like this, like trees, in all the lonely wastes of Africa, cut off even from communication with their own selves. Was it any wonder that life stood still if a man became a tree? Therefore, he, Makhaya, could run so far in search of peace, but it was contact with other living beings that a man needed most. Maybe even Utopias were just trees. Maybe. Maybe he walked around in hopeless circles, but at least he was attempting to reach up to a life beyond the morass in which all black men lived. Most men were waiting for the politicians to sort out their private agonies
.

  At this point he ceased thinking altogether, and the sun passed its topmost peak in the sky and began sinking towards the horizon. At about three o’clock Gilbert returned with the police officer George Appleby-Smith and a doctor. Makhaya sat in the car drinking a little water and eating food which Gilbert had brought along, while the policeman and doctor made their reports. Gilbert also sat in the car but he kept silent, too. Eventually the doctor came out of the hut and walked towards the car.

  “I’d say the poor little fellow died of malnutrition,” he said.

  He kept quiet a moment, screwed up his eyes, and looked away. The hospitals were full of children who died in the posture of the little boy in the hut, their knees cramped up to their chins, their bony fingers curled into their palms like steel claws. Most of those who survived would be mental defectives or cripples – while this little boy had mercifully died.

  “The policeman wants to know if it’s all right to bury the boy here,” he added quietly.

  Only Makhaya moved. “I’ll accept responsibility for that,” he said. He turned round and picked up a small can of petrol, jumped out of the car, and walked to the hut. George Appleby-Smith stood in the dark hut, staring at the little heap of bones, with an expressionless face. All these sights were supposed to be all in a day’s work to him. But he stored these experiences away to give him the courage to run his area the way he thought it ought to be run, even to befriending ‘security risks’ like Makhaya. All those authorities had kicked up such a dust about his allowing a ‘security risk’ to settle in Golema Mmidi, but they never had occasion to come out into the bush to see how children died, while he, George, saw everything, every day. He turned towards Makhaya with one of those very rare smiles.

  “Hullo, Makhaya,” he said. “You settling down?”

  “You still sticking your neck out for me?” Makhaya countered, also smiling.

  Makhaya bent and poured a little petrol over the heap of bones, struck a match, and within a few seconds converted the pathetic sight into ashes. Then he scooped up the ashes into a small container which was lying in a corner of the hut. There was not a trace of the agony and fright in which the little boy must have died. Apart from the tin container, the small boy’s bedding, a half a bag of ant-riddled sorghum meal, and a badly burned porridge pot, there was nothing else in the hut. They took with them only the tin container and the tied-up bundle outside the hut. It was long past sundown when they arrived in the village of Golema Mmidi. Even George Appleby-Smith had nothing to say. Droughts and dead children made him lose his sense of humour, and he got into his own car with the doctor and drove away. Maria walked quickly into the yard in her aloof, serious way. The whole village knew by now that Paulina’s child had died and they were all in her yard, not talking but just sitting in heavy silent groups, like the trees. Makhaya suddenly could not bear this most exacting of all African customs, not just then, not with his emotional involvement with Paulina. He handed the tin container to Maria.

  “Please take this to Paulie,” he said. “Tell her I thought it best to burn what was left of the child.”

  Gilbert walked with his wife to the home of Paulina but Makhaya walked to his own hut, still clutching the tied-up bundle of wood carvings, and dropped on the bed in a deep and dreamless sleep. An hour later Maria knocked on the door. She had a tray with food and a cup of tea. There was silence inside the hut so she pushed the door open and walked in, setting the tray down on the table. She stood looking down with a slight smile at the sleeping man. Being an African man he ought to have known that nothing happened on the continent of Africa without all Africans getting to know of it. In some mysterious way, the news had travelled around the village of Golema Mmidi that Makhaya had spent the previous night at Paulina’s home, even though Paulina had made no mention of it to anyone. God knows what they expected of the poor man, but it had added a twist of drama to an everyday event of mourning a death, which event everyone had to participate in. People were genuinely sorry for the bereaved Paulina, but they soon forgot it when only Maria and Gilbert turned up for the show with the remains of the dead child in a tin container. A lively titter of whispering started and Maria heard it all, silly things that would keep women twittering for days. If you can’t face a crowd you must be a person who hates people, irrespective of a lifetime of individual deeds of kindness to individual people. That’s why deviationists and independent-minded people were so few in Africa. But it wasn’t because of the crowd that she awoke Makhaya. They had dispersed and gone their way by now. It was because of Paulina and the way she blamed herself for the death of her child in a quiet, final and despairing way without the usual tears or hysterics. She kept on looking at everyone with that haughty stare as much as to say, “Why don’t you all go away.” Only Mma-Millipede suspected that this quiet attitude meant that Paulina might try to kill herself, and she had confided this aside to Maria and said that she would remain behind, even for the whole night if necessary.

  Maria bent and shook the sleeping man awake. “Have some food,” she said in a kind and gentle voice because she was sorry, in her personal and private way, for everyone’s suffering.

  Since she hesitated, he turned to this twin soul of privacy and isolation and asked, “Do you know what I saw today, Maria?”

  “No,” she said curiously.

  “Even the trees were dying, from the roots upward,” he said. “Does everything die like this?”

  “No,” she said. “You may see no rivers on the ground but we keep the rivers inside us. That is why all good things and all good people are called rain. Sometimes we see the rain clouds gather even though not a cloud appears in the sky. It is all in our heart.”

  He nodded his head, fully grasping this in its deepest meaning. There was always something on this earth man was forced to love and worship by reason of its absence. People in cloudy, misty climates worshipped the sun, and people in semi-desert countries worshipped the rain.

  “Paulina is blaming herself for the death of the child,” she added softly, frightened at involving herself in the feelings of this sensitive man.

  “I knew she would,” he said, and paused in his eating and looked up at her. “I couldn’t say anything about it with everyone there. Have they gone away?”

  “Yes, but Mma-Millipede is still there.”

  He put the unfinished plate of food on the tray and stood up, waiting for her to pick up the tray and leave the hut. Then he blew out the candle and picked up the bundle of wood carvings.

  “What a way for you to come home, little boy,” he whispered, and stepped out into the dark night. The wind had died down and the stars shone down in the low, black sky with full, green lights. The stars were always there to accompany a man’s lonely footsteps. They had been with him on the night he first arrived in Botswana, and they were like sprays of flowers between the narrow, grim streets of the slums in which he had grown up. They would be there too after he passed away, and they were all the conviction he had that some quiet and good creator controlled and owned the earth.

  Mma-Millipede was saying much the same thing to Paulina.

  They sat out in the yard, near a bonfire of logs which the men of the village had lit, as a sign of death in the house. He stood for a moment outside the range of the firelight and listened to the murmur of Mma-Millipede’s voice. Not only Jesus Christ had observed this but Mma-Millipede too – that this earth was not the final abode of man. It was a place of sorrows, a wilderness in which his soul wandered in restless torment. The soul had to accept this. But the young woman whom she so wisely counselled drooped her head and arms forlornly to the ground. No words, however wise, could explain the awfulness of death, not while the living were firmly attached to love, child-bearing, child-rearing, hunger, struggle, and the sunrise of tomorrow. Life had to flow all the time, for the living, like water in a stream. Makhaya held it in his hand. It was the little bundle of wood carvings. Yet he stood where he was until the two women slowly became aware of his
presence.

  “Makhaya!” Paulina exclaimed, jumping up and rushing towards the faint outline of his white shirt. “Oh, why did you take so long to come,” she cried brokenly, and a torrent of hot tears spilled on to his shirt like a small waterfall. He slipped one free arm around her thin, bony waist. “Aren’t you glad I’ve come now? I’ve brought you something.” But even when she had untied the bundle near the firelight, with trembling fingers, this small waterfall continued to drench her arms and blouse and skirt. Mma-Millipede had to join in too with long, slow teardrops and many ‘Bathos’ while they examined the carvings, one by one. After a time Makhaya could see that they were actually laughing in spite of those tears because they both knew the boy, with his oversized scarcrow coat and big smile. They saw how he had killed a snake in the bush, brought it back to his hut and carefully copied the patterns of its body on to the wooden handle of a porridge spoon. But the handwork on the little crocodile was different from the small boy’s rough strokes. It had the smooth, polished finish of an old professional hunter and wood-carver and such a man had passed by the small boy’s cattlepost one day and exchanged his own professional work for that of a cheerful little boy. And what other way was there to mourn the death of such a boy? Makhaya liked it this way, for he imagined the small boy the way he had been, standing quite close by and observing it. It made his heart feel very peaceful. It reminded Mma-Millipede that her back was aching and she was very tired. He stood up and accompanied Mma-Millipede all the way to her home, her tired feet shuffling quietly on the path beside him.

  She sighed deeply to herself in an absent-minded way, but as they were about to part company she said, “Well, I say, my son, this is a world full of sorrows.”

  “Yes,” he said.