African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  Jabavu says, breaking into a shrill whirl of words from the mother: “Ah, Mother, shut up!” The words “shut up” are in English. And now Pavu is really shocked, with the whole of himself, not merely with that part of him that pays tribute to the old forms of behaviour. He says, quickly, to Jabavu: “And now that is enough. Our father is waiting.” He is so ashamed that he lifts the sacking from the door and steps outside, blinking into the sunlight. The sun is pale bright gold, and quickly gathering heat. Pavu moves his stiff limbs in it as if it were hot water, and then stands beside his father. “Good morning, my father,” he says; and then the old man greets him: “Good morning, my son.”

  The old man wears a brown blanket striped with red, folded over his shoulder and held with a large steel safety-pin. He carries a hoe for the fields, and the spear of his forefathers with which to kill a rabbit or buck if one should show itself. The boy has no blanket. He wears a vest that is rubbed into holes tucked into a loincloth. He also carries a hoe.

  From inside the hut come voices. The mother is still scolding. They can hear scraping sounds and the small knock of wood—she is kneeling to remove the dead ash and to build the new fire. It is as if they can see her crouching there, coaxing the new day’s fire to life. And it is as if they can see Jabavu huddled on his mat, his face sullenly turned away from her while she scolds.

  They look at each other, ashamed; then they look away past the little huts of the native village; they see disappearing among the trees a crowd of their friends and relatives from these huts. The other men are already on their way to the fields. It is nearly six in the morning. The father and Pavu, avoiding each other’s eyes because of their shame, move off after them. Jabavu must come by himself—if he comes at all. Once the men from this hut were first at the fields, once their fields were first hoed, first planted, first reaped. Now they were last, and it is because of Jabavu who works or does not work as he feels inclined.

  Inside the hut the mother kneels at the fire, watching a small glow of flame rise inside the hollow of her sheltering hand. The warmth contents her, melts her bitterness.

  “Ah, my Big Mouth, get up now,” she says with tender reproach. “Are you going to lie there all day while your father and brother work?” She lifts her face, ready to smile forgiveness at the bad son. But Jabavu leaps from the blanket as if he had found a snake there, and roars: “My name is Jabavu, not Big Mouth. Even my own, my given name, you take from me!” He stands there stiff, accusing, his eyes quivering with unhappy anger. And his mother slowly drops her eyes, as if guilty.

  Now this is strange, for Jabavu is a hundred times in the wrong; while she has always been a proper mother, a good wife. Yet for that moment it is between these two, mother and son, as if she has done wrong and he is justly accusing her. Soon his body loses the stiffness of anger and he leans idly against the wall, watching her; and she turns towards the crescent-shaped earth shelf behind her for a pot. Jabavu watches intently. Now there is a new thought, a new need—which kind of utensil will she bring out? When he sees what it is, he quivers out a sigh of relief, and his mother hears that sigh and wonders and marvels. She had brought out not the cooking pot for the morning porridge, but the petrol tin in which she heats water for washing.

  The father and Pavu, all the men of the village, will wash when they return from the fields for the first meal, or in the river by the place where they work. But Jabavu’s whole being, every atom of his brain and body is concentrated on the need that she should serve him thus—should warm water especially so that he may wash in it now. And yet at other times Jabavu is careless of his cleanness.

  The mother sets the half-tin on the stones in the clump of red and roaring flames, and almost at once a wisp of blueish steam curls off the rocking water. She hears Jabavu sigh again. She keeps her head lowered, wondering. She is thinking that it is as if inside Jabavu, her son, some kind of hungry animal is living, looking out of his eyes, speaking from his mouth. She loves Jabavu. She thinks of him as brave, affectionate, clever, strong, and respectful. She believes that he is all these things, that the fierce animal which has made its lair inside Jabavu is not her son. And yet her husband, her other children, and indeed the whole village call him Jabavu the Big Mouth, Jabavu the greedy, the boastful, the bad son, who will certainly one day run off to the white man’s town and become one of the matsotsis, the criminal youth. Yes, that is what they say, and she knows it. There are even times when she says so herself. And yet—fifteen years ago there was a year of famine. It was not a famine as is known in other countries that this woman has never heard of, China perhaps, or India. But it was a season of drought, and some people died, and many were hungry.

  The year before the drought they sold their grain as was usual to the African store, keeping sufficient for themselves. They were given the prices that were fair for that year. The white man at that store, a Greek, stored the grain, as was his custom, for resale to these same natives when they ran short, as they often did—a shiftless lot, always ready to sell more than they should for the sake of the glittering shillings with which they could buy head-cloths or bangles or cloth. And that year, in the big markets in America and Europe there was a change of prices. The Greek sold all the maize he had to the big stores in town, and sent his men around the native villages, coaxing them to sell everything they had. He offered a little more money than they had been used to get. He was buying at half of what he could get in the city. And all would have been well if there had not been that season of drought. For the mealies wilted in the fields, the cobs struggled towards fullness, but remained as small as a fist. There was panic in the villages and people came streaming towards the Greek store and to all the other African stores all over the country. The Greek said Yes, Yes, he had the maize, he always had the maize, but of course at the new price laid down by the Government. And of course the people did not have the money to buy this newly expensive maize.

  So in the villages there was a year of hunger. That year, Jabavu’s elder sister, three years old, came running playfully to her mother’s teats, and found herself smacked off, like a troublesome puppy. The mother was still feeding Jabavu, who had always been a demanding, hungry child, and there was a new baby a month old. The winter was cold and dusty. The men went hunting for hares and buck, the women searched through the bush all day for greens and roots, and there was hardly any grain for the porridge. The dust filled the villages, the dust hung in sullen clouds in the air, blew into the huts and into the nostrils of the people. The little girl died—it was said because she had breathed too much dust. And the mother’s breasts hung limp, and when Jabavu came tugging at her dress she smacked him off. She was sick with grief because of the death of the child, and also with fear for the baby. For now the buck and hares were scarce, they had been hunted so relentlessly, and one cannot keep life on leaves and roots. But Jabavu did not relinquish his mother’s breasts so easily. At night, as she lay on her mat, the new baby beside her, Jabavu came pushing and struggling to her milk, and she woke, startled, saying: “Ehhh, but this child of mine is strong.” He was only a year old, yet she had to use all her strength to fend him off. In the dark of the hut her husband woke and lifted Jabavu, screaming and lacking, away from her, and away from the tender new baby. That baby died, but by then Jabavu had turned sullen and was fighting like a little leopard for what scraps of food there were. A little skeleton he was, with loose brown skin and enormous, frantic eyes, nosing around in the dust for fallen mealies or a scrap of sour vegetable.

  This is what the mother thinks of as she crouches watching the wisps of steam curl off the water. For her Jabavu is three children, she loves him still with all the bereaved passion of that terrible year. She thinks: It was then, when he was so tiny, that Jabavu the Big Mouth was made—yes, the people called him the Big Mouth even then. Yes, it is the fault of the Long Hunger that Jabavu is as he is.

  But even while she is excusing him thus, she cannot help remembering how he was as a new baby. The women use
d to laugh as they watched him suck. “That one was born hungry,” they said, “that one will make a big man!” For he was such a big child, so fierce in his sucking, always crying for food . . . and again she excuses him, fondly: If he had not been so, if he had not fed his strength from the time he was born, he too would have died, like the others. And at this thought she lifts her eyes, filled with love and pride—but she lowers them again quickly. For she knows that a big lad, like Jabavu, who is nearly seventeen years old, resents it when a mother looks at him, remembering the baby he was. Jabavu only knows what he is, and that very confusedly. He is still leaning against the mud wall. He does not look at his mother, but at the water which is heating for his use. And inside there is such a storm of anger, love, pain, and resentment: he feels so much, and all at once, that it is as if a wind-devil had got into him. He knows quite well that he does not behave as he ought, yet there is no other way he can behave; he knows that among his own people he is like a black bull in a herd of goats—yet he was bred from them; he wants only the white man’s town, yet he knows nothing of it save what he has heard from travellers. And suddenly into his head comes the thought: If I go to the white man’s town my mother will die of grief.

  Now he looks at his mother. He does not think of her as young, old, pretty, ugly. She is his mother, who came properly endowed to her husband, after a proper amount of cattle had been paid for her. She has borne five children, three of whom live. She is a good cook and respectful to her husband. She is a mother, as a mother should be, according to the old ideas. Jabavu does not despise these ideas: simply, they are not for him. There is no need to despise something from which one is already freed. Jabavu’s wife will not be like his mother: he does not know why, but he knows it.

  His mother is, in fact, according to the new ideas, not yet thirty-five years old, a young woman who would still look pretty in a dress such as the townswomen wear. But she wears some cotton stuff, blue, bound around her breasts leaving her shoulders bare, and a blue cotton skirt bunched in such a way that the heat will not scorch her legs. She has never thought of herself as old, young, modern or old-fashioned. Yet she, too, knows that Jabavu’s wife will not be as she is, and towards this unknown woman her mind lifts in respectful but fearful wonder. She thinks: Perhaps if this son of mine finds a woman who is like him, then he will no longer be like a wild bull among oxen . . . this thought comforts her; she allows her skirt to fall as it will, steps back from the scorching heat, and lifts the tin off the flames. “Now you may wash, my son,” she says. Jabavu grabs the tin, as if it might run away from him, and carries it outside. And then he stops and slowly sets it down. Sullenly, as if ashamed of this new impulse, he goes back into the hut, lifts his blanket which lies where he let it drop, folds it and lays it on the earthen shelf. Then he rolls his reed mat, sets it against the wall, and also rolls and places his brother’s mat. He glances at his mother, who is watching him in silence, sees her soft and compassionate eyes . . . but this he cannot bear. Rage fills him; he goes out.

  She is thinking: See, this is my son! How quickly and neatly he folds the blanket, sets the mats against the wall. How easily he lifts the tin of heavy water! How strong he is, and how kind! Yes, he thinks of me, and returns to tidy the hut, he is ashamed of his thoughtlessness. So she muses, telling herself again and again how kind her Jabavu is, although she knows he is not kind, and particularly not to himself; and that when a kind impulse takes him, such as it has now, Jabavu behaves as if he has performed a bad deed and not a good one. She knows that if she thanks him he will shout at her. She glances through the door of the hut and sees her son, strong and powerful, his bronze skin shining with health in the new morning’s sun. But his face is knotted with anger and resentment. She turns away so as not to see it.

  Jabavu carries the tin of water to the shade of a big tree, strips off his loincloth and begins to wash. The comforting hot water flows over him, he liked the tingle of the strong soap: Jabavu was the first in all the village to use the white man’s soap. He thinks: I, Jabavu, wash in good, warmed water, and with proper soap. Not even my father washes when he wakes . . . He sees some women walking past, and pretends he does not see them. He knows what they are thinking, but says to himself: Stupid kraal women, they don’t know anything. But I know that Jabavu is like a white man, who washes when he leaves his sleep.

  The women slowly go past and their faces are sorrowful. They look at the hut where his mother is kneeling to cook, and they shake their heads and speak their compassion for this poor woman, their friend and sister, who has bred such a son. But in their voices is another note of emotion, and Jabavu knows it is there, though he cannot hear them speak. Envy? Admiration? Neither of these. But it is not the first time a child like Jabavu has been bred by the villages. And these women know well that the behaviour of Jabavu can be understood only by thinking of the world of white man. The white man has brought evil and good, things to admire and things to fear, and it is hard to know one from the other. But when an aeroplane flies far overhead like a shining beetle through the air, and when the big motorcars drive past on the road North, they think also of Jabavu and of the young people like him.

  Jabavu has finished washing. He stands idle under the big tree, his back turned to the huts of the village, quite naked, covering what should not be seen of his body with his cupped hand. The yellow patches of sunlight tremble and sway on his skin. He feels the shifting warmth and begins to sing with pleasure. Then an unpleasant thought stops the singing: he has nothing to wear but the loincloth which is the garb of a kraal-boy. He owns an old pair of shorts which were too small for him years ago. They once belonged to the son of the Greek at the store when that son was ten years old.

  Jabavu takes the shorts from the crotch of the tree and tries to tug them over his hips. They will not go. Suddenly they split behind. Cautiously he twists himself to see how big the tear is. His buttock is sticking out of the material. He frowns, takes a big needle such as is used for sewing grain sacks, threads it with fine strands of fibre stripped from under the bark of a tree, and begins to make a lace-work of the fibre across his behind. He does this without taking the shorts off: he stands twisted, using the needle with one hand and holding the edges of frayed material with the other. At last it is done. The shorts decently cover him. They are old, they grip him as tight as the bark of a tree grips the white wood underneath, but they are trousers and not a loincloth.

  Now he carefully slides the needle back under the bark of the tree, rolls his loincloth into the crotch of the trunk, then lifts down a comb from where it is laced through a frond of leaves. He kneels before a tiny fragment of mirror that he found in a rubbish-heap behind the Greek store, and combs his thick hair. He combs until his arm is tired, but at last the parting shows clear down his scalp. He sticks the steel comb jauntily at the back of his head, like the comb of a fine cock, and looks at himself happily in the mirror. Now his hair is done like a white man’s.

  He lifts the tin and throws the water in a fine, gleaming curve over the bushes, watching the drops fall in a glittering shower; and an old hen, which was seeking shelter from the heat, runs away squawking. He roars with laughter, seeing that flapping old hen. Then he tosses the tin away into the bushes. It is new and glints among the green leaves. He looks at the tin, while an impulse stirs in him—that same impulse that always hurts him so, leaving him limp and confused. He is thinking that his mother, who paid a shilling for the tin in the Greek store, will not know where it is. Secretly, as if he were doing something wicked, he lifts the tin, carries it to the door of the hut and, stretching his hand carefully around the opening, sets it inside. His mother, who is stirring meal into boiling water for the porridge, does not turn around. Yet he knows that she knows what he is doing. He waits for her to turn—if she does and thanks him, then he will shout at her; already he feels the anger crowding his throat. And when she does not turn he feels even more anger, and a hot blackness rocks across his eyes. He cannot endure that anyone,
not even his mother, should understand why he creeps like a thief to do a kind thing. He walks swaggering back to the shade of the tree, muttering: I am Jabavu, I am Jabavu—as if this were the answer to any sad look or reproachful words or understanding silence.

  He squats under the tree, but carefully, so that his trousers may not fall completely to pieces. He looks at the village. It is a native kraal, such as one may see anywhere in Africa, a casual arrangement of round mud huts with conical grass roofs. A few are square, influenced by the angled dwellings of the white man. Beyond the kraal is a belt of trees, and beyond them, the fields. Jabavu thinks: This is my village—and immediately his thoughts leave it and go to the white man’s town. Jabavu knows everything about this town, although he has never been there. When someone returns, or passes through this village, Jabavu runs to listen to the tales of the wonderful living, the adventure, the excitement. He has a very clear picture in his mind of the place. He knows the white man’s house is always of brick, not of mud. He has seen such a house. The Greek at the store has a brick house, two fine rooms, with chairs in them, and tables, and beds lifted off the floor on legs. Jabavu knows the white man’s town will be of such houses, many many houses, perhaps as many as will reach from where he is sitting to the big road going north that is half a mile away. His mind is bright with wonder and excitement as he imagines it, and he looks at his village with impatient dissatisfaction. The village is for the old people, it is right for them. And Jabavu can remember no time when he has not felt as he does now; it is as if he were born with the knowledge that the village was his past, not his future. Also, that he was born longing for the moment when he could go to the town. A hunger rages in him for that town. What is this hunger? Jabavu does not know. It is so strong that a voice speaks in his ear, I want, I want, as if his fingers curl graspingly in a movement, We want, as if every fibre of his body sings and shouts, I want, I want, I want . . .