by Lewis Desoto
Märit leans over and pokes at the meat with a fork until the juice trickles out. “You can take it off the heat now, he likes it red. Is the maize done?”
“It’s boiling.”
“All right, just let it rest in the pot for a while. Come, I’ll show you how to make a dressing for the salad.”
Märit demonstrates by pouring a spoonful of oil into a bowl and slowly adding a bit of vinegar. “Just mix it together well,” she says, handing the fork to Tembi. “Faster,” she adds as Tembi stirs the mixture. “You need to beat it together so the oil mixes.” She puts her hand over Tembi’s to increase the motion.
A drop of oil splashes across Märit’s hand. “Oh! I’m sorry, Missus.”
“Never mind. Here, you’d better wear this apron. Let me tie it for you.” Märit knots the strings of the apron and pats Tembi on the shoulder. “Why don’t you cut the bread instead—Ben likes a lot of bread with his supper. I’ll finish the dressing.” She turns Tembi around by the shoulders and smiles. “And call me Märit, not ‘Missus.’”
When the food is ready they both carry the plates into the dining room. There are only two places set at the table, one for Märit and one for Ben. Märit is suddenly aware of this disparity—but it is usual, she reassures herself, for Grace never ate with them either. House servants do not sit down to meals with their employers.
Märit looks away, embarrassed. “Thank you, Tembi. I’ll ring the bell when we are finished.” She leaves the room to fetch Ben.
Ben, as he always does, eats hungrily for a minute or two without speaking, then, when the first urgency of his appetite is assuaged, he sits back and takes notice of her. Märit does not mind this, she thinks of it as something masculine, and enjoys watching him in those first moments. He is the same way with her, when they are alone at night—direct, urgent to take possession, to have her, and only then becoming aware of her own desire and needs. To see his appetite at table is to remind her of the way he is in private, and suggests a promise of other appetites later.
“Did you get all your business done in town?” she asks as she cuts into her steak.
“I met van Staden, you know, our neighbor on the next farm, and mentioned the snake. Seems his own wife found one in the house too. Also a mamba. Nine feet at least, he said. And he’s heard of other incidents. For some reason there are more snakes around this year.”
Märit looks down at her steak, the thick meat as the knife slices into it, the pink juices. She remembers the thick body of the snake, hanging limp in Tembi’s hands, and the bloody pulp of the crushed head. And she remembers her fear. She sets down her cutlery and pushes the plate to one side, reaching for a slice of bread instead. “Let’s talk of something else.”
“Of course. I was thinking that when the harvest is done this year…” He looks at her plate. “Aren’t you going to eat your steak?”
“I’m not hungry. You have it.” Märit slides the plate across to Ben. “You were saying…?”
“Yes, when the harvest is done, why don’t we take a little trip? We could go to the coast. Durban, maybe?”
“Oh, Ben, I’d love to. Or even better, Cape Town.” Anywhere civilized, anywhere away from here, she almost says.
“Yes, I thought you’d like the idea. We need a little holiday.”
Märit’s appetite reappears and she serves herself salad. “It’ll be lovely. We can swim in the ocean, and eat seafood, and go to the movies.”
When they have finished eating, Märit rings the silver bell that stands on the table next to the sauce bottles, a signal to Tembi in the kitchen that she may clear away the dishes. Ben rises and pats his pockets. “Have you seen my tobacco pouch?”
As he turns towards the door, Tembi enters with the tray and there is a small collision. The tray is knocked from Tembi’s hands to the floor. Both she and Ben crouch to retrieve it at the same time. In the action of squatting, Tembi’s dress rides up her thighs, revealing the shadowed declivity there, and at the same moment Ben, in reaching for the tray, brushes her knee with his hand.
They both look at Märit. Tembi’s face darkens with embarrassment, with a kind of apprehension, almost shame. Ben rises to his feet with a sheepish grin and hands the tray to Tembi.
“Sorry, my fault.”
But in the moment before Ben rises, Märit has seen another expression on his face, in that moment when his hand brushed Tembi’s knee and his eyes dropped for a split second to the shadow between her partly open thighs. An expression of fleeting swiftness, disappearing in the instant that he turns to Märit with his abashed grin. But she has seen it, and she recognizes the look, for it has been on Ben’s face before, when he has looked at her as she rises from the bath, or as she sits on the edge of the bed to put on nylon stockings, and his eyes drop with that almost glazed look to the juncture of her thighs. She has never minded, for it is proof of his maleness, and proof of her allure.
Ben smiles sheepishly and says, “I’ll just go and find my tobacco. Shall we have our coffee in the lounge?” He turns away, assiduously not looking at Tembi.
Märit remains in her chair as Tembi gathers the dishes and puts them on the tray. She sees the bare feet, clean but somehow very naked, and she sees the way the thin cotton dress moves across the buttocks and rests on the full breasts, rounder than her own. As Tembi leans across the table, Märit smells the faint female perfume of her body.
Märit pushes her chair back abruptly and strides out of the room, down the corridor to the bedroom. She opens her closet and rummages around on the shelves.
When she has found what she wants she returns to the kitchen, where Tembi is standing at the sink. Märit drops a pair of sandals on the floor. “Try those on.”
Tembi wipes her hands and crouches to slip on the sandals, and again her dress slides up, showing her strong thighs. The sandals are slightly too small for Märit and not much used. Tembi’s feet are smaller than Märit’s but with a similar shape, narrow with long toes, and they slip into the sandals comfortably.
“They fit,” she says with a smile. “Thank you, Missus.”
“I don’t want you to walk barefoot when you are in the house.” Märit thrusts a pale blue cotton housecoat towards Tembi, something she bought in Klipspring to wear when cleaning the house but has not used more than once or twice. Tembi slips the coat on and buttons it up. The hem falls to mid-calf.
“We are the same size,” Tembi says. “Thank you, Missus.”
“Wear it when you are serving. There is no need to walk around half dressed. And bring the coffee through to the living room.”
Tembi drops her eyes at the coldness in Märit’s voice and nods. “Yes, Missus.”
Ben is sitting at the radio when she enters the living room, his hands on the dial, tuning in to the evening weather report. Märit sits in her own chair and lights a cigarette, inhaling with quick, irritated little puffs.
When Tembi brings in the coffee tray, Ben glances over at her once, then bends to the radio, twiddling the dial to find another station. Static fills the room.
Märit pours the coffee. “Do we have to listen to the radio?”
Ben switches it off. “How are things working out with Tembi?”
“Fine.”
“Nice to have someone young around the house.”
“Is it? She isn’t that much younger than me.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean that. I meant younger than Grace. She used to be a little dour sometimes. Made you feel that you shouldn’t leave things too untidy. It sometimes felt as if she ran the house, not us. Not you, I mean.”
When he looks over at Märit, she glares at him, and a quick flash of understanding passes between them, a moment of shared knowledge between husband and wife. There is an unspoken admission on his part that he has looked with lust at Tembi, and an unspoken admission on her part that she saw this. But neither Märit nor Ben can speak of what they know. To do so will admit that mistrust can exist, that fidelity is only a contract, sometimes bro
ken.
“Well,” Ben says, “it can’t be easy for her, losing her mother like that, and her father off in the mines. It’s good that you’ve done something for her.”
Is it? Märit wonders. And who will it be good for?
16
IN ANOTHER PART of the country, north of Kudufontein, across the border, at first light, when the birds have begun to call out the new day and the animals stir in their sleeping places, when farmer and worker alike still lie abed, two men are already busy at their task.
In the darkest hours of this night, when the fields and the veldt lie silent under a faint moon, they come across the border. Not at any checkpoint, with passport and customs control officers in attendance, nor on any road or path, but instead crossing the line at an anonymous and lonely place, where cutting the strands of barbed wire that straddle the land is easy, and unnoticed.
Each man carries a cheap canvas knapsack across his back, and they walk fast and silent, for their task requires darkness, and they must return across the border before daylight, which will bring helicopters, and soldiers on horseback with trackers searching out footprints.
They are in the peaceful grassland now, in the farmlands, the land that the white farmers call their own. But the two men have brought an opposing view—what might be called a disputation of ownership. Their petition is in the form of plastique; a cheap, lightweight explosive that is easy to use, and deadly. This is a petition that will give voice to many mouths, and will not go unnoticed.
Each man also carries a land mine in his knapsack. These devices are small and crude, but then their function is simple. Once buried in the sand of a country road, their pressure pads will be triggered by the weight of a vehicle, and the explosives will ignite, spraying hot shards of metal in all directions. That is their sole function—to explode, to destroy, to kill. The handiwork of clever men in distant places: scientists, politicians, financiers, ideologues. The men come now in the bird-sound–rich dawn to the radio tower on the outskirts of the sleeping town, the town called Klipspring. Once more they cut strands of barbed wire, in this country of fences, working in silence, without wasted gestures or unnecessary words, for they have trained in these actions and rehearsed them. At the base of the radio transmitting tower the plastique is packed against metal struts, and fuses and timers are set, then the men go back through the gap in the fence, closing it behind them.
They walk to the road, some two hundred yards from the turning to the tower, and there bury the two land mines beneath the soil of the road. So that when the tower explodes, and the soldiers inevitably come speeding to the scene in their Jeeps and trucks, they will encounter a second deadly petition.
And now the two men disappear into the bush, back towards the border and their homeland, their home-in-exile, hoping to be there before the helicopters come, and the patrols, and the mounted soldiers with the trackers who can follow footprints almost as fast as a fleeing man can make them. But even there, across the line, who can be safe? For this is a war, and in times of war who can have a home, even in exile? Who can be safe?
17
EVERY WEDNESDAY Märit drives into Klipspring with Ben. It is the day for shopping in the town, for lunch in the Retief Hotel—a day away from the farm.
Today Märit wakes as Ben steps from the bathroom and stands in front of the mirror to dress. The curtains are drawn wide, because that is the first thing Ben does every morning when he rises, open the curtains to assess the weather—a farmer’s habit—and the morning light falls across the floor in a broad swath that illuminates him as he stands in front of the mirror. He is still naked, still a little damp from his morning bath, his clothes laid out on the chair next to the wardrobe.
Märit lies in the warm sheets, where the scent of her husband’s body lingers, and the warmth of his body is still with her under the sheet, and she looks at her husband so slim and strong as he stands in the morning light, and he is beautiful to her.
“Come back to bed for a little bit,” she says.
Ben smiles at her in the mirror as he fastens his watch to his wrist. He always puts his watch on first, before he dresses. He turns to look at Märit and says, “We don’t really have time.”
She looks down the length of his body and her desire is hot in her loins. Since they have come to the farm his body has grown stronger and more muscular. He seems bigger to her now, even down there, between his legs where her eyes linger.
Märit pulls the sheet back to reveal herself. “I’m yours,” she murmurs.
“Shameless,” Ben says, smiling, but he does not come to her, reaching instead for his trousers and slipping them on. “We really don’t have time to waste this morning. I have to get the pump dismantled before we go to town, I didn’t get round to it yesterday. And I want to pick up my seedlings before the railway station closes for lunch.”
Märit stretches, cat-like, and gives him a veiled look. Ben crosses to the bed and sits down next to her. He looks at his watch. She grasps his hand and puts it on her lower belly.
“Märit, we have to get going. We don’t want to be late. And the maid will be coming in to call us to breakfast any minute.”
“Send her away. We have time.”
He rises. “No, really, we don’t.”
“Don’t you want me?”
“Always. Tonight, I promise.” He reaches for his shirt and completes his dressing. “Up you get now, darling,” he says from the door as he goes out.
Märit lies with her hands clasped between her thighs. Her frustration makes her want to shout. She moves her fingers into her wetness, then pulls them away. She has never been able to do that, to herself, it seems wrong somehow. Kicking away the sheets she sighs and rises from the bed.
From the closet Märit brings out her blue silk dress, the one with the cinched waist and the wide skirt and the scooped neckline that shows off her throat and shoulders. The dress that she wore with Ben on their honeymoon in Durban. She wonders if he will notice. But then she changes her mind and lays the dress across the unmade bed and selects instead a cream-colored suit and half-heels of a slightly darker color than her suit. A leather handbag completes the ensemble.
When she appears in the kitchen, hair brushed, makeup applied, Ben is standing at the stove sipping a cup of coffee. Tembi is there, giggling shyly at something Ben has just said.
“I thought you were in a hurry to get the pump dismantled,” Märit says. “Aren’t you the one who is worried that we’ll be late?”
“Just going.” He sets his cup down on the counter and leaves by the back door, still smiling at his joke with Tembi.
“The Baas and I are driving in to Klipspring today,” Märit says.
“Yes, Missus.” Her eyes linger on Märit’s suit.
Märit pours herself a cup of coffee and takes a fresh package of cigarettes from the carton in the cupboard. “I won’t be back until late this afternoon, so you’ll have the whole morning to clean the house. Leave the bedroom, though, you don’t have to clean in there.”
“Yes, Missus.”
Märit has never liked servants in her bedroom; even as a girl in her parents’ house she did the tidying there herself. It is the one intimate place she wants to keep private.
“I think it might be a good idea for you to polish the silverware today. Do you know how to do that? Do you know where the cleaning things are?”
“Yes, Missus. I have seen my mother cleaning the silver. I can do it.”
Märit turns her back. “Right. See that you do a good job.”
Outside, she waits impatiently next to the pickup truck. Ben is not in sight. She regrets that she still has not yet learned to drive. If she could, she would get behind the wheel and start the engine and drive towards the gate so that Ben would have to come running after her. She walks around to the side of the house and smokes a cigarette.
THE WEEKLY TRIP into Klipspring is something Märit enjoys and looks forward to, a high point breaking the monotony of the week.
Ben will collect the mail, and she will make the rounds of the shops and then meet him at the hotel for lunch. Afterwards they will sit with a coffee and brandy on the bougainvillea-shaded veranda at the back of the Retief Hotel while Ben reads the newspapers and she smokes, dreamily, looking at the gardens. Often there will be people there they know, neighbors, acquaintances, for Wednesday is town-day for most of the farmers, and she and Ben might join another table for conversation and perhaps a second brandy.
She has a fondness for the hotel; it was where she stayed with Ben when they came up to the district to look at the farm the first time. When she thinks back on that occasion she remembers less of the farm than of the two long afternoons in the hotel room, the shutters drawn, a whisper of a breeze cooling the perspiration that their lovemaking had drawn out on their skin. She remembers the cold, cold beer that Ben ordered from room service, and the feel of the glass on her naked belly. She remembers how the first sip had seemed to make her instantly drunk. She remembers taking the cold liquid in her mouth, and holding it there until her lips were cool, then taking the heat of him into her cool mouth. She was shameless.
Sometimes she wishes that Ben would suggest they take a room at the hotel in Klipspring for the afternoon, instead of returning to the farm. But she knows that is no longer possible, she and Ben are known here now. There would be gossip. She knows that she could not come down into the lobby afterwards and see the knowing glances. But she wishes that she and Ben were free in that way again.
Ben is already waiting for her in the pickup outside the house. He has loaded the machine parts into the back of the truck and washed his hands. He has on a blue denim shirt and a dark blazer.
Märit is silent in the cab of the truck as they set off. She has decided to be a bit cold to him, to let him feel her displeasure of the morning. For the first few miles she says nothing, and he wisely holds his peace, but after a while she relents, for she does not want to spoil the day; the grass is yellow in the sunlight, casting violet shadows, and at the foot of a rocky outcrop she sees a splash of pink and white flowers.
