A Blade of Grass

by Lewis Desoto

  “I suppose we can manage. But only two days, mind.”

  “Yes, Missus. Thank you, Missus.” Grace bobs her head gratefully and backs towards the door.

  Märit feels a sudden pang of guilt, aware of the coldness in her manner, aware that even though this woman works in the house every day, Märit knows so little of her. For a moment she cannot quite remember the daughter’s face or even if she has met her.

  “How old is your girl now, Grace?”

  “Eighteen years, Missus.”

  Not that much younger than Märit herself. “And how is she getting on?” Märit asks, curious now. “What does she do here on the farm?”

  “Tembi is working in the dairy, Missus. She is a good girl. A very clever girl.” The lines around her eyes wrinkle in a smile.

  “Does she have any schooling?”

  “Oh yes, Missus. Before we came to this place Tembi was learning many things in the school. And there is a school here, on Sundays. She is very clever now. She is clever in everything. One day she can be a teacher, or even a nurse in the city.”

  “Well, perhaps. The city is not always the best place for a country girl. And her father, what does he do here on the farm?” How little she knows of their lives, Märit realizes. How invisible they can be. Even now, after three months, she has asked almost nothing about Grace’s life. But she is still a stranger here herself, still unsure. She wonders if she can ask Grace to sit down, to drink a cup of tea with her. But that sort of thing is not done. It would break all the rules.

  “My husband is in Johannesburg, Missus. He is working in the gold mines.”

  “Oh, I see. But you prefer to be here?”

  Grace shakes her head. “There is no place for families on the mines. The men live in hostels on the mines.”

  “But you see him, don’t you?”

  “The men have annual leave, Missus. So that they can visit their families. We are not traveling to Johannesburg.”

  “Well,” Märit says, drawing back from any further intimacy, from any further knowledge. This is not the time or place to discuss the ways of this country. “Of course you can go to see your cousin, Grace. But only two days, mind.”

  “Yes, Missus.” The relief shows on her face. “Thank you, Missus.” She bows her head and moves to the door.

  “Oh, Grace?”

  “Yes, Missus?” Grace says, turning in the doorway.

  Märit points. “Don’t forget the tea tray.”

  “No, Missus,” Grace says humbly, bowing her head. “Sorry, Missus.”

  3

  BEHIND THE FARMHOUSE, behind the screen of trees, eucalyptus and a few mulberries, is the kraal where the workers’ rondavels are situated—circular huts of mud and wattle, with tightly thatched roofs of straw and whitewashed walls—and behind the kraal is the small area of vegetable gardens for the workers—spinach, tomatoes, carrots—and beyond this is the veldt, grasses and shrubs and a few doringbooms—thorn trees—and beyond the veldt are the kloofs and koppies—the gullies and hills. The orchards and the fields and the river lie in the opposite direction, where the land is fertile. But here are gullies and hills and thorn trees. Here is the koppie called Duiwelskop. It is here that Tembi brings her seeds.

  Her dress is a simple cotton garment, blue, patterned with small white flowers, fastened down the front except for the upper two buttons, which are undone because she is hot, and she is alone and there is nobody to look upon her full breasts. Her head is bare, she does not wear a doek, as her mother does, for she does not work in the house, or go to town, and so a head scarf is not necessary. Her feet are bare, dusty with dried mud, the soles hard.

  It is here Tembi comes, to the hidden side of Duiwelskop, cradling her tin can with its precious cargo of seeds, moist and cool and soft now from soaking in the water. The smooth brow of her oval-shaped face is furrowed with concentration. It is here she will plant the seeds, in this unfrequented place, away from the house and the kraal. Here she will make her garden.

  At the foot of the koppie, in the shelter of the rocks, Tembi clears a space. With a hoe taken from the toolshed she slices away the tussocks of tough grass, then with a garden fork she digs into the soil, turning over the clods of earth and breaking them up. Dropping to her knees she uses a trowel to break the soil up further, removing any pebbles and bits of root. Finally, she sifts the soil through her long, slim fingers, meticulously picking out every twig, every hint of weed, every bit of hard stone.

  Earlier, she has pilfered a few handfuls of potash and bonemeal from the supply shed, and added some coffee grounds and crushed eggshells. Using her bare hands she works this mixture into the soil, squeezing, sifting, combing, and caressing. Tenderly she does this, for this is her patch of earth now, her garden, her place on the farm. This small piece of the land, measuring not more than a couple of feet in either direction, is hers now.

  Tembi makes a trip to the washhouse tap, and returns with a red plastic bucket of water, careful lest she is seen, careful lest she spill a drop, for water will be precious here. She has chosen the place so that the warm morning sun can fall directly on the plot of earth, and in the heat of the afternoon the rocks will cast a cooling shade.

  In the gullies beyond the koppie Tembi breaks branches from the doringboom trees and builds a barrier around her patch of earth, long sharp thorns to keep out small animals, such as the duikers that roam the hills and might wander here in search of tender green shoots. She carries stones and small rocks to build a low wall, artfully placing them to mimic the natural arrangement of the koppie’s rocks and boulders. Only a careful inspection would reveal that a garden exists here. But who would care to look? The place is safe.

  Her arms are nicked with scratches from the thorns, the muscles in her back are weary, her fingernails are ragged. But her garden is built.

  Now she must plant the seeds.

  Tembi pokes a hole into the soil with her forefinger, gently, one, two, three, four, five times, each small depression to the same depth, just past the second knuckle of her finger. Then a small scoop of water with her palm to pour into each hole. The seeds are cool and moist and softened from lying in the dampness of the tin can. A pale white seed into each dark receptacle. Then the soil is brushed gently over the seeds, and smoothed, and patted down softly. In each spot where a seed is hidden Tembi places a single tiny pebble. She scoops water again with her palm and wets the earth, and the aroma of the dampened soil rises to her nostrils, like the smell of the countryside that wafts across the fields in the summer when the afternoon rains have fallen and the land is wet and fragrant. The smell of life to come. But today only here, in this place, this hidden place.

  She sits back on her haunches. She is alone. There is only the koppie and the empty countryside and the blue sky. Her heart is beating, with pleasure, with her secret knowledge, with anticipation. This now is her own acre of the world, her garden, her farm, her country. Her secret. Here she will grow that which does not as yet grow. From here the sweetness will come. A gift.

  4

  THERE USED TO BE another place. Not this place, but before this place. Before the Relocation. Grace lived there and Tembi lived there and her father, Elias, lived there. It was the place of their family and the place of their people.

  The hills were grass-covered, rich with green grass fed from the streams that ran down the kloofs and rolled into the distant valley. The cattle were well fed on the rich green grass, and fat. The maize plants grew tall and the cobs were thick and abundant.

  In the mornings a mist covered the hills, and in the afternoons, after rain, a mist covered the hills, and in between the sun was bright on the hills and the birds sang. The fields were fertile, the water was sweet, and in the valley the people were happy.

  The name of the place was Ezulwini, The Valley of Heaven.

  On a day like any other day, at the end of the summer, a car drove along the winding track through the hills and up to the place called Ezulwini. Because this was a rare
occurrence, and because the car was seen for many miles and by many people before it finally reached the village, a large group of onlookers had gathered to greet the unexpected visitor. Because of this, the news that the visitor brought that day fell on many ears all at once.

  Two men emerged from the car, one black man wearing a much-worn dark suit and a tie, and one white man, who wore sunglasses and did not take them off.

  The village headman came forward, greetings were made, hospitality was offered, food and drink, but the white man shook his head and said, No, there was no time. And so the other man drew a sheet of paper from his pocket and began to read what was written there.

  The government had declared that this land was no longer the land of the people who lived there. Another place had been declared their land and all who lived here must now go and live there in that other place.

  The headman said he did not understand this declaration. This land was the land of the people and had always been so, and he did not understand what this declaration meant. No doubt it was a mistake on the part of the government.

  The man in the suit looked at the man in sunglasses, who obviously understood the language being spoken, because he said, “No mistake,” and then added in Afrikaans, “Maak hulle verstaan.” Make them understand.

  So the schoolteacher was fetched, a man who knew something of life in the cities, and he read the paper for himself, and then read it aloud to the village headman, and said, “The government is telling us to leave this place and make our homes in another place.”

  The village headman shook his head again and said, “I do not understand this government. Such a thing is not possible.”

  And now the white man in the sunglasses, who had been leaning against his car with his arms folded, became impatient with all this discussion and said to his assistant, “Give him the paper.” He turned to the headman and instructed, “Two weeks. You have two weeks to get ready.”

  The visitors climbed back into their car and drove the long winding track that led through the hills, and the small boys ran after the car laughing in the dust while the village elders gathered around the paper to examine it, as if by studying it further they would understand how their land and their home could be declared not their land and not their home. But they could not understand the reasons, which were formulated by ideologues in the distant cities and on the fertile farms, men and women who had decided that it was the will of God that the races must live separately and that the white race was ordained to remain superior.

  After two weeks had passed, the trucks came, and the people were required to place all their belongings on the trucks, then to climb aboard themselves. Their cattle and their goats and their furniture and their tools were also placed on the trucks. A detachment of policemen stood by to ensure that this loading was orderly.

  The trucks drove down the long winding track that led through the hills of Ezulwini, The Valley of Heaven, and this time there were no small boys to run laughing after the vehicles. On the following day two bulldozers were brought up to the empty village, and the huts were knocked down and flattened by the bulldozers and the debris spread across the fields so that the place entered the silence of the hills and lost its name. In other places along the frontier of the country, other villages were being relocated, lives uprooted, new places created while the old places were exiled into silence. It was the command of the government.

  The new place had no name, because no one had ever lived there. The government erected huts and installed a water outlet, and then the trucks departed.

  In the new place where Tembi came with her mother and father, the soil was hard against the plows and yielded little in the way of crops. The seeds that the government had provided were weak in their growth. The cattle grew thin. During that first winter many of the villagers became ill with influenza. Because the harvest was poor, because the soil was hard, because the seed was weak, some of the young men left the village and made the journey into the city where there was work in the gold mines and the factories. But the money they sent back to their parents and their families from the mines was not enough, and soon other men left for the city. Tembi’s father, Elias, was among the men who went to dig the gold out of the mines. The soil remained hard, the seed poor. Then some of the women left the village and went to the towns and the cities to find jobs as house servants, as maids and cooks and washers of laundry.

  By the time of the second winter the population of the village consisted of mostly the young and the old—children and their grandparents. In the winter of that year Tembi became ill with influenza and spent long hours huddled in her hut, wrapped in a blanket next to the kerosene stove. Her father sent money for medicine but it was never enough. The inhabitants of the village began to drift from this place without a name, to find work on farms and factories elsewhere. If there was a name for this place it was only Sorrow.

  When the winter ended, Tembi’s mother heard about a job as a cook on a farm in another district. She asked the schoolteacher to write a letter of recommendation, and she made the long journey to the farm to apply in person.

  The Missus at the farm, an old Afrikaner woman who lived only with her husband, took a liking to Grace and said she could have the job and come and cook in the farmhouse and live in the kraal. So Grace left the village, and took Tembi to the farm. Not many months later, the old couple decided to leave the farm because of the Missus’s ill health. Their son drove up in his car from the city and walked around the farm, writing down in a book the quantity of cattle, the yield of the maize, the number of workers. He stayed only two days before leaving. The farm was put up for sale.

  Those who worked on the farm, who lived in the huts of the kraal, who tended the cattle and tilled the fields and cooked the food, waited to see what would become of their lives, for everything depended on who would own the farm.

  The farm was sold to a young man from the city, who came with his young bride. One of the first things he did was change the name of the farm from Duiwelskop to Kudufontein. He organized the men to repair the fences, to whitewash the outside walls of the rondavels in the kraal. A contractor from Klipspring came to build a washhouse of cement blocks and install a water tap in the kraal where there had been none before. The young man bought and sold cattle, so that the herd was healthy, and he replanted some of the fields. For three months the farm was a flurry of activity and change.

  Now Grace works in the farmhouse, cooking and cleaning. Tembi works in the dairy with the other girls, where they milk the cows and make the butter and the cream.

  Tembi has only seen her father once in the past year, when he came back from the mines for two weeks on his annual leave. He sends letters, he sends money, sometimes a small gift. In his letters to Grace he asks her to save as much money as she can, as he will do too, so that one day he can leave the mines, so that one day he too can buy a plot of land for his family, so that he can plant the seeds and till the soil.

  For Tembi, life has been broken apart. The people she knew before the Relocation are scattered. Ezulwini is no more. She is a stranger here.

  5

  MÄRIT APPEARS at the kitchen door, not entering, but hanging back as if she must ask permission from Grace before coming in. The kitchen is Grace’s domain. Just as Grace is uncomfortable in the rest of the house, so Märit feels herself to be a trespasser here. She has tried to be friendlier with Grace, the way she was with Miriam, the woman who worked in the house when Märit was a girl. But maybe the laws of apartheid are more rigid here in the countryside, for Grace maintains a dignified distance and sometimes seems puzzled by Märit’s attempts to blur the lines between mistress and servant.

  Grace looks up from where she is slicing carrots at the table and directs a quizzical glance at the pale face of the woman standing in the doorway. She rises, wiping her hands on the front of her apron.

  “Missus?

  “Is there any hot water left in the kettle, Grace? I want to take a flask of tea to m
y husband…to Baas Ben…”

  “Yes, Missus, I can make it.”

  “No, no, you carry on with what you are doing. I’ll do it.” She brushes the hair from her face and moves to the sink.

  Grace sits down again and continues cutting the carrots while Märit spoons some tea into the pot and adds hot water, and as the tea steeps she fetches a handful of biscuits from the tin in the pantry. When the tea is ready Märit pours it into a Thermos flask with some milk and a spoonful of sugar. The biscuits she wraps in a sheet of waxed paper before placing them in the pocket of her dress.

  Outside the house the landscape seems cloaked in stillness. It is always this way, even when the tractor is plowing, and the cattle are lowing at milking time, and the voices of the farm hands are calling. The sky and the distance make all sounds small and insignificant. She stands on the veranda, feeling herself shrink from the landscape, as if the silence will absorb her as well. When she descends the steps and walks across the gravel driveway, it seems she floats above the earth, not a part of it, her passage hardly disturbing a blade of grass.

  She is wearing a light cardigan over her dress, for it was cool in the house, and already the material prickles against her arms as she steps into the heat.

  Märit walks down and across the rock garden and past the windmill, through the orchard where the new fruit is still small and green and hard on the branches, until she reaches the edge of the field where Ben intends to plant his almond seedlings.

  Ben comes from the industrial north of England, and even as a boy in that country he had looked with longing on the fields, the neat rows of crops, the cattle peaceful in the pastures. Even as a boy he wanted to be a farmer. Not an insurance salesman like his father, selling life policies to factory workers. He has told Märit of a childhood memory of almond trees in blossom, the white flowers swaying in the breeze like the white foam that blows across the waves of the ocean. When Märit first met Ben, before he had this farm, he talked often of this dream of his, for it struck some deep chord in his soul, even though he was a child, and the memory has beckoned to him all his life.