African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  It was about four years later that the robberies began again. The McClusters’ house was the first to be rifled. Someone climbed in one night and took the following articles: Willie’s big winter coat, his stick, two old dresses belonging to Jane, a quantity of children’s clothing and an old and battered child’s tricycle. Money left lying in a drawer was untouched. “What extraordinary things to take,” marvelled the McClusters. For except for Willie’s coat, there was nothing of value. The theft was reported to the police, and a routine visit was made to the compound. It was established that the thief must be someone who knew the house, for the dogs had not barked at him; and that it was not an experienced thief, who would certainly have taken money and jewellery.

  Because of this, the first theft was not connected with the second, which took place at a neighbouring farmhouse. There, money and watches and a gun were stolen. And there were more thefts in the district of the same kind. The police decided it must be a gang of thieves, not the ordinary pilferer, for the robberies were so clever and it seemed as if several people had planned them. Watchdogs were poisoned; times were chosen when servants were out of the house; and on two occasions someone had entered through bars so closely set together that no one but a child could have forced his way through.

  The district gossiped about the robberies; and because of them, the anger lying dormant between white and black, always ready to flare up, deepened in an ugly way. There was hatred in the white people’s voices when they addressed their servants, that futile anger, for even if their personal servants were giving information to the thieves, what could be done about it? The most trusted servant could turn out to be a thief. During these months when the unknown gang terrorized the district, unpleasant things happened; people were fined more often for beating their natives; a greater number of labourers than usual ran away over the border to Portuguese territory; the dangerous, simmering anger was like heat growing in the air. Even Jane found herself saying one day: “Why do we do it? Look how I spend my time nursing and helping these natives! What thanks do I get? They aren’t grateful for anything we do for them.” This question of gratitude was in every white person’s mind during that time.

  As the thefts continued, Willie put bars in all the windows of the house, and bought two large fierce dogs. This annoyed Jane, for it made her feel confined and a prisoner in her own home.

  To look at a beautiful view of mountains and shaded green bush through bars, robs the sight of joy; and to be greeted on her way from house to storerooms by the growling of hostile dogs who treated everyone, black and white, as an enemy, became daily more exasperating. They bit everyone who came near the house, and Jane was afraid for her children. However, it was not more than three weeks after they were bought that they were found lying stretched in the sun, quite dead, foam at their mouths and their eyes glazing. They had been poisoned. “It looks as if we can expect another visit,” said Willie crossly; for he was by now impatient of the whole business. “However,” he said impatiently, “if one chooses to live in a damned country like this, one has to take the consequences.” It was an exclamation that meant nothing, that could not be taken seriously by anyone. During that time, however, a lot of settled and contented people were talking with prickly anger about “the damned country.” In short, their nerves were on edge.

  Not long after the dogs were poisoned, it became necessary for Willie to make the trip into town, thirty miles off. Jane did not want to go; she disliked the long, hot, scurrying day in the streets. So Willie went by himself.

  In the morning, Jane went to the vegetable garden with her younger children. They played around the water-butt, by themselves, while she staked out a new row of beds; her mind was lazily empty, her hands working quickly with twine and wooden pegs. Suddenly, however, an extraordinary need took her to turn around sharply, and she heard herself say: “Tembi!” She looked wildly about her; afterwards it seemed to her she had heard him speak her name. It seemed to her that she would see a spindly earnest-faced black child kneeling behind her between the vegetable beds, poring over a tattered picture book. Time slipped and swam together; she felt confused; and it was only by looking determinedly at her two children that she regained a knowledge of how long it had been since Tembi followed her around this garden.

  When she got back to the house, she sewed on the verandah. Leaving her chair for a moment to fetch a glass of water, she found her sewing basket had gone. At first she could not believe it. Distrusting her own senses, she searched the place for her basket, which she knew very well had been on the verandah not a few moments before. It meant that a native was lingering in the bush, perhaps a couple of hundred yards away, watching her movements. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. An old uneasiness filled her; and again the name “Tembi” rose into her mind. She took herself into the kitchen and said to the cookboy: “Have you heard anything of Tembi recently.” But there had been no news, it seemed. He was “at the gold mines.” His parents had not heard from him for years.

  “But why a sewing basket?” muttered Jane to herself, incredulously. “Why take such a risk for so little? It’s insane.”

  That afternoon, when the children were playing in the garden and Jane was asleep on her bed, someone walked quietly into the bedroom and took her big garden hat, her apron, and the dress she had been wearing that morning. When Jane woke and discovered this, she began to tremble, half with anger, half with fear. She was alone in the house, and she had the prickling feeling of being watched. As she moved from room to room, she kept glancing over her shoulders behind the angles of wardrobe and cupboard, and fancied that Tembi’s great imploring eyes would appear there, as unappeasable as a dead person’s eyes, following her.

  She found herself watching the road for Willie’s return. If Willie had been there, she could have put the responsibility on to him and felt safe: Jane was a woman who depended very much on that invisible support a husband gives. She had not known, before that afternoon, just how much she depended on him; and this knowledge—which it seemed the thief shared—made her unhappy and restless. She felt that she should be able to manage this thing by herself, instead of waiting helplessly for her husband. I must do something, I must do something, she kept repeating.

  It was a long, warm, sunny afternoon. Jane, with all her nerves standing to attention, waited on the verandah, shading her eyes as she gazed along the road for Willie’s car. The waiting preyed on her. She could not prevent her eyes from returning again and again to the bush immediately in front of the house, which stretched for mile on mile, a low, dark scrubby green, darker because of the lengthening shadows of approaching evening. An impulse pulled her to her feet, and she marched towards the bush through the garden. At its edge she stopped, peering everywhere for those dark and urgent eyes, and called “Tembi, Tembi.” There was no sound. “I won’t punish you, Tembi,” she implored. “Come here to me.” She waited, listening delicately, for the slightest movement of branch or dislodged pebble. But the bush was silent under the sun; even the birds were drugged by the heat; and the leaves hung without trembling. “Tembi!” she called again: at first peremptorily, and then with a quaver in her voice. She knew very well that he was there, flattening himself behind some tree or bush, waiting for her to say the right word, to find the right things to say, so that he could trust her. It maddened her to think he was so close, and she could no more reach him than she could lay her hands on a shadow. Lowering her voice persuasively she said: “Tembi, I know you are there. Come here and talk to me. I won’t tell the police. Can’t you trust me, Tembi?”

  Not a sound, not the whisper of a reply. She tried to make her mind soft and blank, so that the words she needed would appear there, ready for using. The grass was beginning to shake a little in the evening breeze, and the hanging leaves tremored once or twice; there was a warm mellowing of the light that meant the sun would soon sink; a red glow showed on the foliage, and the sky was flaring high with light. Jane was trembling so she could not control her limbs
; it was a deep internal trembling, welling up from inside, like a wound bleeding invisibly. She tried to steady herself. She said: This is silly. I can’t be afraid of little Tembi! How could I be? She made her voice firm and loud and said: “Tembi, you are being very foolish. What’s the use of stealing things like a stupid child? You can be clever about stealing for a little while, but sooner or later the police will catch you and you will go to prison. You don’t want that, do you? Listen to me, now. You come out now and let me see you; and when the boss comes I’ll explain to him, and I’ll say you are sorry, and you can come back and work for me in the vegetable garden. I don’t like to think of you as a thief, Tembi. Thieves are bad people.” She stopped. The silence settled around her; she felt the silence like a coldness, as when a cloud passes overhead. She saw that the shadows were thick about her and the light had gone from the leaves, that had a cold grey look. She knew Tembi would not come out to her now. She had not found the right things to say. “You are a silly little boy,” she announced to the still listening bush. “You make me very angry, Tembi.” And she walked very slowly back to the house, holding herself calm and dignified, knowing that Tembi was watching her, with some plan in his mind she could not conjecture.

  When Willie returned from town, tired and irritable as he always was after a day of traffic, and interviewing people, and shopping, she told him carefully, choosing her words, what had happened. When she told how she had called to Tembi from the verges of the bush, Willie looked gently at her and said: “My dear, what good do you think that’s going to do?” “But Willie, it’s all so awful . . .” Her lips began to tremble luxuriously, and she allowed herself to weep comfortably on his shoulder. “You don’t know it is Tembi,” said Willie. “Of course it’s Tembi. Who else could it be? The silly little boy. My silly little Tembi . . .”

  She could not eat. After supper she said suddenly: “He’ll come here tonight. I’m sure of it.” “Do you think he will?” said Willie seriously, for he had a great respect for Jane’s irrational knowledge. “Well, don’t worry, we’ll be ready for him.” “If he’d only let me talk to him,” said Jane. “Talk to him!” said Willie. “Like hell! I’ll have him in prison. That’s the only place for him.” “But, Willie . . .” Jane protested, knowing perfectly well that Tembi must go to prison.

  It was then not eight o’clock. “I’ll have my gun beside the bed,” planned Willie. “He stole a gun, didn’t he, from the farm over the river? He might be dangerous.” Willie’s blue eyes were alight; he was walking up and down the room, his hands in his pockets, alert and excited: he seemed to be enjoying the idea of capturing Tembi, and because of this Jane felt herself go cold against him. It was at this moment that there was a sound from the bedroom next door. They sprang up, and reached the entrance together. There stood Tembi, facing them, his hands dangling empty at his sides. He had grown taller, but still seemed the same lithe, narrow child, with the thin face and great eloquent eyes. At the sight of those eyes Jane said weakly: “Willie . . .”

  Willie, however, marched across to Tembi and took that unresisting criminal by the arm. “You young rascal,” he said angrily, but in a voice appropriate, not to a dangerous thief, who had robbed many houses, but rather to a naughty child caught pilfering fruit. Tembi did not reply to Willie: his eyes were fixed on Jane. He was trembling; he looked no more than a boy.

  “Why didn’t you come when I called you?” asked Jane. “You are so foolish, Tembi.”

  “I was afraid, missus,” said Tembi, in a voice just above a whisper. “But I said I wouldn’t tell the police,” said Jane.

  “Be quiet, Jane,” ordered Willie. “Of course we’re calling the police. What are you thinking of?” As if feeling the need to remind himself of this important fact, he said: “After all, the lad’s a criminal.”

  “I’m not a bad boy,” whispered Tembi imploringly to Jane. “Missus, my missus, I’m not a bad boy.”

  But the thing was out of Jane’s hands; she had relinquished it to Willie.

  Willie seemed uncertain what to do. Finally he strode purposefully to the wardrobe, and took his rifle from it, and handed it to Jane. “You stay here,” he ordered. “I’m calling the police on the telephone.” He went out, leaving the door open, while Jane stood there holding the big gun, and waiting for the sound of the telephone.

  She looked helplessly down at the rifle, set it against the bed, and said in a whisper: “Tembi, why did you steal?”

  Tembi hung his head and said: “I don’t know, missus.” “But you must know.” There was no reply. The tears poured down Tembi’s cheeks.

  “Tembi, did you like Johannesburg?” There was no reply. “How long were you there?” “Three years, missus.” “Why did you come back?” “They put me in prison, missus.” “What for?” “I didn’t have a pass.” “Did you get out of prison?” “No, I was there one month and they let me go.” “Was it you who stole all the things from the houses around here?” Tembi nodded, his eyes cast down to the floor.

  Jane did not know what to do. She repeated firmly to herself: “This is a dangerous boy, who is quite unscrupulous, and very clever,” and picked up the rifle again. But the weight of it, a cold hostile thing, made her feel sorry. She set it down sharply. “Look at me, Tembi,” she whispered. Outside, in the passage, Willie was saying in a firm confident voice: “Yes, Sergeant, we’ve got him here. He used to work for us, years ago. Yes.”

  “Look, Tembi,” whispered Jane quickly. “I’m going out of the room. You must run away quickly. How did you get in?” This thought came to her for the first time. Tembi looked at the window. Jane could see how the bars had been forced apart, so that a very slight person could squeeze in, sideways. “You must be strong,” she said. “Now, there isn’t any need to go out that way. Just walk out of that door,” she pointed at the door to the living-room, “and go through into the verandah, and run into the bush. Go to another district and get yourself an honest job and stop being a thief. I’ll talk to the baas. I’ll tell him to tell the police we made a mistake. Now then, Tembi . . .” she concluded urgently, and went into the passage, where Willie was at the telephone, with his back to her.

  He lifted his head, looked at her incredulously, and said: “Jane, you’re crazy.” Into the telephone he said: “Yes, come quickly.” He set down the receiver, turned to Jane and said: “You know he’ll do it again, don’t you?” He ran back to the bedroom.

  But there had been no need to run. There stood Tembi, exactly where they had left him, his fists in his eyes, like a small child.

  “I told you to run away,” said Jane angrily.

  “He’s nuts,” said Willie.

  And now, just as Jane had done, Willie picked up the rifle, seemed to feel foolish holding it, and set it down again.

  Willie sat on the bed and looked at Tembi with the look of one who has been outwitted. “Well, I’m damned,” he said. “It’s got me beat, this has.”

  Tembi continued to stand there in the centre of the floor, hanging his head and crying. Jane was crying too. Willie was getting angrier, more and more irritable. Finally he left the room, slamming the door, and saying: “God damn it, everyone is mad.”

  Soon the police came, and there was no more doubt about what should be done. Tembi nodded at every question: he admitted everything. The handcuffs were put on him, and he was taken away in the police car.

  At last Willie came back into the bedroom, where Jane lay crying on the bed. He patted her on the shoulder and said: “Now stop it. The thing is over. We can’t do anything.”

  Jane sobbed out: “He’s only alive because of me. That’s what’s so awful. And now he’s going to prison.”

  “They don’t think anything of prison. It isn’t a disgrace as it is for us.”

  “But he’s going to be one of those natives who spend all their lives in and out of prison.”

  “Well, what of it?” said Willie. With the gentle, controlled exasperation of a husband, he lifted Jane and offered her his handk
erchief. “Now stop it, old girl,” he reasoned. “Do stop it. I’m tired. I want to go to bed. I’ve had hell up and down those damned pavements all day, and I’ve got a heavy day tomorrow with the tobacco.” He began pulling off his boots.

  Jane stopped crying, and also undressed. “There’s something horrible about it all,” she said restlessly. “I can’t forget it.” And finally, “What did he want, Willie? What is it he was wanting, all this time?”

  * * *

  I. This story was written in 1950.

  Old John’s Place

  THE people of the district, mostly solidly established farmers who intended to live and die on their land, had become used to a certain kind of person buying a farm, settling on it with a vagabond excitement, but with one eye always on the attractions of the nearest town, and then flying off again after a year or so, leaving behind them a sense of puzzled failure, a desolation even worse than usual, for the reason that they had taken no more than a vagabond’s interest in homestead and stock and land.

  It soon became recognised that the Sinclairs were just such persons in spite of, even because of, their protestations of love for the soil and their relief at the simple life. Their idea of the simple was not shared by their neighbours, who felt they were expected to measure up to standards which were all very well when they had the glamour of distance, but which made life uncomfortably complicated if brought too close.