A Blade of Grass

by Lewis Desoto

Tembi suddenly reaches for her mother’s warm hand and holds it to her cheek and presses her lips to the calloused palm.

  “Go well, Mother,” the girl says.

  “Stay safe, my child,” comes the reply from the darkness.

  ELSEWHERE IN THE DARKNESS, as the dawn approaches, there is a celebration, or rather the tail end of a celebration. The occasion is the return of two young men who have just the day before come back to the district after completing their two years of national service in the army.

  They are local boys who have grown up in this district. Their return has been cause for a party, especially because they were both fortunate enough not to have been sent across the border on one of those quiet little incursions that the army makes—punishing raids against exiles and dissidents who don’t adhere to the creed of apartheid—expeditions, unannounced to the public but nevertheless common knowledge, that always result in a death or two and leave many other deaths behind.

  A party, for two young men who returned home without being shot at, without having to shoot at anybody, without having to kill anybody. Although they were ready, as they told their friends, and it was too bad they didn’t see any action, too bad they weren’t sent out on a raid. They were ready, and can be at any time they are called. Ready to do what has to be done. But the truth is they are farmers’ sons, more suited to cultivation and husbandry than destruction, for all their bravado, and they are glad to be back on the land, to be home.

  They drive home now, Carl and Eugene, neighbors, friends since childhood. The party began at the farm of Carl’s parents, with swimming, then a braai—a barbecue—with beer in a big iron tub filled with ice and all the neighbors from the other farms there to welcome the two young men home. Later the young people go into Klipspring to the Retief Lounge at the hotel and there is more drinking, until the party becomes too rowdy and they are refused service, so they go on to The Roadhouse, just outside of Klipspring, where you can buy a drink after hours and no questions asked, where they close the place down. By then it’s just Carl and Eugene who decide to drive to Eugene’s house, because he says he has a bottle of brandy there and will cook bacon and eggs as the sun rises.

  They pile into the car after a small argument over who is to drive, who is the least tired, but it is Carl’s car so he drives. The night is dark once they are away from the lights of Klipspring, but Carl knows the route, he is familiar with these roads that wind across the veldt between the farms. The headlights sweep across the vegetation and the strange half-light they create is melancholy, but familiar.

  Grace hears the sound of the car’s engine as she walks along the road in the stillness of the dark and her heart lifts with the knowledge that she is not entirely alone. Perhaps the car will stop for her, she thinks. It is probably a farmer transporting something to Klipspring, to the railway station for the early freight train, and he will stop for her, because the farmers in this district sometimes stop for a person walking on the road, even if you are black, and they let you sit in the back of their trucks—unless you are walking out on the main road where the traffic speeds by too fast to even make out a face and nobody stops because nobody knows who you are.

  Grace sets her case down in the dust and listens, unsure in which direction the car is traveling, but just the sound of human life out there lifts her spirit. To be alone in the darkness is to be lost in the world. A brief arc of light flashes across the veldt, then disappears. The vehicle is some distance away, she decides, and she lifts her case and walks on. The sound of the engine comes and goes. She wants it to be traveling in the direction of Klipspring, even if just a little way, for her legs are tired and she is uncomfortable in the darkness, afraid of animals, even though it has been years since so much as a hyena has been sighted in this district. But she does not know this, for this is not her district, and so she is afraid of the darkness.

  Her breathing is labored and she holds her breath a moment, so that it will not sound in her ears, so she can listen for the car. The sound of the engine is louder, and Grace thinks she sees the lights again, coming from the direction of the farm, and she is glad because that means the vehicle is heading in the same direction as she is. She turns to wait for it.

  In the car that travels alone towards the dawn, Carl’s eyes droop for a moment with happy exhaustion. He is happy to be home, away from the war, back in his own country.

  Grace sees the bushes at the side of the road light up in sudden detail, every leaf clear and frozen in the white light as if painted by a flash of lightning. The roar of the engine shatters the stillness, and in a moment of disorientation Grace realizes that the car is immediately behind her. As she turns, the left fender hits her on the hip, breaking the bone on impact, and Grace is flung to the side of the road and something else breaks inside her as she falls. A deep pain rips in her chest, a pain that pulls the darkness of night down deep into her body.

  “Fok! What was that?” Carl grasps the steering wheel in both hands and slams his foot on the brakes as the suddenly swerving vehicle slews towards the bushes. The rear of the car fishtails to right and left in the soft sand, then rights itself before the vehicle comes to a stop.

  Carl looks in the rearview mirror and sees only swirling dust in the red glow of the brake lights.

  “I think it was an antelope,” Eugene says, because out of the corner of his eye he saw a dark shape, a quick leaping shape just as the car bumped.

  “You think so? Did we hit it?” Carl gets out and walks around to the front of the car and looks at the hood, which is unmarked, then he walks back a few paces down the road and peers into the darkness and sees nothing. The dust settles.

  “Hello?’ he calls. “Anybody there?” No sound, no movement. There is only the night.

  “Well, it didn’t do any damage, whatever it was,” Carl says as he gets back in. “It must have been an animal of some kind. Did you see it, Eugene?”

  “An impala or something,” Eugene says. “What else could it have been?”

  “It could have been a person,” Carl says, because at the moment of impact he thought he saw a face. He rubs his eyes and looks out into the darkness.

  “A person?” Eugene says disbelievingly. “But what would a person be doing out here at this time of the night?”

  “Up to no good, probably,” Carl says, and chuckles. “All the honest people are in bed by now.”

  “Except for us,” Eugene says, and twists in his seat to look through the rear window. “Maybe you should look again, Carl.”

  He gets out and walks back along the road a few yards. “Anyone? Elkeen daar?” A scuffling in the grass, some small rodent darting away. In the distance the faint barking of a dog.

  “Nothing,” he says when he returns to the car. “It must have been an antelope.”

  The dust hangs in the faint light of approaching dawn as the car drives off.

  9

  AS DAWN TOUCHES the kraal, Tembi leaves her hut and makes her way along the path from the kraal to the kitchen of the farmhouse, as her mother does every morning. She knows what needs to be done, for Grace has instructed her, and even though she will be alone in preparing the breakfast on this day, the tasks are not unfamiliar. Often she had come with her mother, and sat at the kitchen table with a mug of hot tea and a rusk for dipping while Grace went about her morning duties. But Tembi has never been into the other rooms of the house, not even when the Missus and the farmer were away. Grace has never allowed that. When Tembi asked why, her mother replied, “This is not our house,” in a tone of finality that cut off Tembi’s curiosity. Tembi has had to content herself with only a glimpse through the doorway into the dining room, and down the corridor to the other rooms where Missus Märit lives.

  Today Tembi has been instructed to prepare the breakfast and to take it into the dining room. When breakfast is ready, she is to ring the little silver bell that sits on the sideboard. She is to wait in the kitchen until the Missus and Baas Ben are finished and then clear away and wash th
e dishes. After that, if Missus Märit does not require her to do anything else, she is to go to her regular work in the dairy.

  In the kitchen Tembi lifts her mother’s apron from the hook and ties it around her waist. The edge of the apron dangles to her knees and she loops the strings twice around her waist. After she scrapes out the cold ashes from the big iron stove and loads it with fresh wood and a few pieces of coal, Tembi stands shivering next to the open stove door until the fire is blazing, then she fills the kettle with water and sets it on the stovetop.

  What comes next? She runs over the sequence of instructions Grace has given her. Porridge, then eggs, then tea and toast. The porridge that she measures into the pot is not the coarse maize that she herself eats, but something much more finely ground, although the proportions of water and grain are the same. While she slices bread for toast she keeps an eye on the porridge, so that when it boils she can shift it off the direct heat and let it steam for a few minutes. The bread goes onto the grill rack in the upper part of the oven to toast.

  After giving the porridge a quick stir to make sure there are no lumps, Tembi counts out the cutlery, two of everything: knives, forks, spoons, teaspoons, cups and saucers, plates, side plates, egg cups, napkins. All of it is loaded onto a tray and carried into the dining room. She takes a tablecloth from the sideboard and sets the table, one setting on each side. Then the salt and pepper shakers, sugar bowl—and make sure there is enough sugar—then milk from the fridge for the porridge, poured into a small jug, finally HP Sauce, butter, marmalade.

  The toast! She runs back into the kitchen and pulls the grill rack from where a tendril of smoke is drifting. One of the slices is burned. So she cuts another from the loaf and slides it onto the grill. Another quick stir of the porridge before moving it to the side of the stove away from the heat. Now the water in the kettle is boiling and she must pour some into a pot and add two eggs to boil and watch the little clock carefully so that the eggs cook for just the right amount of time, not too soft and not too hard. While she stands at the stove watching the hands of the clock, Tembi chews the burned slice of toast and counts off in her mind all the steps she has taken, to be sure she has not forgotten anything.

  The tea is made last. A splash of boiling water into the teapot, swirl it around, pour it out, add four spoons of leaves, pour in the boiling water, carry the pot into the dining room. Don’t forget the tea strainer. Now spoon the porridge into the blue serving bowl, place the lid over it, set it on the table.

  Tembi takes a moment to run her eye over the table. Everything in place, nothing forgotten.

  While she has been setting out the breakfast, other sounds have been audible from the interior rooms of the house: the gurgle of the cistern as a toilet flushes, a murmur of voices, the heavy tread of the farmer, then a radio voice, in Afrikaans, reading the weather. Tembi takes the little silver bell from the sideboard and extends her arm in the direction of the interior of the house and shakes the bell. Then she retreats to the kitchen.

  When she has waited a few moments, and heard the Missus and Baas Ben sitting down to breakfast, Tembi pours herself a glass of tea and slips out the back door, which she leaves ajar so that she will hear if they summon her.

  The early sun casts a pool of warm light onto the side of the house, painting the white walls orange like the glow of a flame, and she sits on the kitchen steps in this warmth, holding the warmth of her glass of tea in both hands, and because it is early in the day and because she has risen before the sun and she is tired, she closes her eyes a moment.

  The summons sounds into her sleep like the warning blare of a car’s horn on a deserted road, and a voice calls, “Grace!” and Tembi leaps to her feet. The glass of tea drops from her hands and cracks into two pieces on the steps, the dark liquid spreading across the cement steps.

  The bell from the dining room rings again, and the voice calls, “Grace?”

  Tembi runs into the kitchen, to her mother, for the voice is calling her mother and she expects to see her mother, standing there at the stove as always, but it is Missus Märit who stands there instead.

  “Oh, Tembi, it’s you,” Märit says. “Sorry, I forgot Grace wasn’t here today. Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Tembi shakes her head. “I am all right, Missus.”

  “You can clear away the breakfast things now.”

  “Yes, Missus. I will do that.”

  Afterwards, after she has washed the dishes and put them back into the cupboards, and shaken the crumbs from the tablecloth and folded it away, and swept the kitchen floor, Tembi slips out of the kitchen. There on the back steps are the two pieces of her drinking glass, two pieces exactly like each other, for the glass has broken right down the center. Her first impulse is to take the broken glass and throw it away in some unseen place, for she doesn’t want the Missus to know of her carelessness, but instead she fits the two pieces together, so that they are a whole, and she holds them in her hand, together as a whole, and makes her way back along the path to the kraal.

  WHEN DAWN APPEARS in this part of the country it begins with a thin line of deep red along the horizon, like the red coals that lie in the heart of a fire. The sky changes from black to gray. What was unshaped darkness now is revealed as the silhouettes of acacia trees, shrubs, the gentle rise of a koppie. A faint color creeps over the veldt, and the grayness is infused with the tans and the olive greens and the reddish dust that is the color of Africa. The dew that lies on the grass gleams like silver. Birdsong fills the branches of the trees. The sunlight spreads across the veldt like golden honey.

  On the road between Kudufontein and Klipspring two feral dogs, thin-shanked, scavenging, scent the body lying in the dust. They scramble across the ditch and circle warily, sniffing at the suitcase and the handbag and the supine figure. One of the dogs, bolder, fastens its teeth around a corner of Grace’s overnight bag and drags it away. The other chases. There is a brief snarling and tussling between the two dogs and the bag breaks apart under the ripping teeth, spilling the contents into the dust. A blouse is shredded, and a brassiere. One dog grasps a shoe in its jaws and lopes swiftly away. The other returns to the body and noses it, then makes a quick cringing nip at an area of exposed flesh. But some noise disturbs the dog and it snarls from the side of its mouth before slinking off after its companion.

  A bicycle approaches at a leisurely pace. A man named Griffiths Mthali is cycling to his job in Klipspring, and he sees the ripped valise on the road and the torn clothes, and he stops his bicycle and stares at these objects. He turns his head and surveys the veldt, the trees, the bushes. Then he dismounts and bends to study the objects in the dust, but does not touch them. He walks to the side of the road and looks down into the ditch and sees the body lying there. He touches the woman’s face, which feels cold under his fingers, and he sees the dried blood on her lips and nostrils. With a cry of alarm he runs back to his bicycle and pedals furiously towards the town.

  The duty constable at the police station in Klipspring drives out in his van to rediscover the body and examine it. He suspects murder. In the absence of any witnesses and any further evidence, he handcuffs Griffiths Mthali in the back of the van and radios to his sergeant for instructions. The sergeant drives out in another van, the corpse is inspected further, then the body is loaded into the back of the second van and taken into Klipspring. The doctor arrives later to examine the body. Griffiths Mthali is questioned, threatened, and left in his cell for some hours. At last a tentative conclusion of accidental death is reached. Pending further investigation, Mthali is released from his cell, with the advice not to leave the district.

  A telephone call is made to Mr. Ben Laurens, employer of the domestic servant named Grace Mkize. Death is announced.

  The two young men who celebrated that night as they drove along the dark roads, who thought themselves lucky to have returned safely from the war without killing, who now sleep off their celebration into the late hours of the da
y, will never hear of the death of a domestic servant on an outlying road. The death of Grace Mkize will not be remarked upon in the privileged world of these young white farmers as they go about their ordered lives.

  10

  FIRST HE MUST plant the seeds.

  Ben Laurens tips his hat back on the crown of his head and crouches and lifts a handful of freshly dug soil in his fingers, lets it rest in his palm, then trickles it back onto the earth. The men have gone back to the kraal for their midday meal and he is alone now. Shortly he too will return to his house for lunch. But in this moment, before he goes up to the house to join Märit, he wants to be alone and savor the realization of his dreams.

  One day there will be a row of almond trees growing along this fence, this newly erected fence where the wire is taut and shiny and the posts are still clean and unweathered. One day he will walk in this very spot with his wife and their children and there will be the scent of almond blossoms in the air to greet them.

  In Ben’s shirt pocket is a small glass jar with a screw top, and inside the jar is a handful of soil—reddish, loamy, rich.

  When he first came to this country he would often drive up to the border country and meander along the back roads, studying the farms he passed. One day he stopped the car and got out to smell the air, and as he inhaled the aroma of the veldt, the sweet grass, the sun-warmed soil, he had the sudden feeling that he had come home. Taking the empty bag which had contained his sandwiches, he walked a few yards from the road and scooped a handful of the rich soil into the bag. When he returned to his small apartment in Hillbrow, he poured the soil into a glass jar and set it on the mantelpiece. In that jar was the soil of Kudufontein, the beginning of his garden, of his farm.

  Land is cheap here, especially so near the border, the troubled border, but that is why Ben can own a farm here, where so many are unwilling to risk a belief in the future. He rises to his feet and rests his hands on the shiny wire, careful of the barbs, and lets his eyes travel the width of his land. He is not naïve, he knows the risks, he knows the history, he knows that there are many who look upon him with envy, perhaps with hate. But Ben is also an idealist, and he believes that if he is fair, if he is just, if he is generous, then he will be understood, not resented, even respected. One day the ways of the country will change, and fair, just men who can farm well will be appreciated, even desired.