A Blade of Grass

by Lewis Desoto

  “I think we’re going to have a good summer,” Ben says. “There’s been a lot of rain this spring.”

  “Look,” Märit exclaims, pointing as a large blue bird flashes across the road, “a kingfisher.” As she speaks the engine cuts out. Thinking that Ben is going to stop to look at the bird she says, “We don’t have to stop.”

  “I didn’t. Something’s wrong with the truck.” He applies the hand brake and turns the ignition key. Nothing happens.

  Ben gets out and opens the hood. Märit follows and stands next to him. After removing his jacket and handing it to her he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and reaches into the engine. “Try and start it,” he says after a moment. She lays his jacket down on the seat and gets behind the wheel. Her efforts are fruitless. There is nothing but a clicking sound.

  “Try turning the headlights on,” Ben calls.

  She flicks the switch and gets out. Ben shades his hands around the glass and peers at the lamp. “Nothing.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. It must be the battery. There’s no power at all.” He releases the catch for the hood and closes it gently, then looks up and down the road.

  “Perhaps someone will come along and give us a lift,” Märit suggests.

  “Unlikely.”

  “What shall we do?”

  He glances at his watch. “Van Staden’s farm is over there a few miles. I can cut across the fields and see if someone can give us a hand.”

  “Won’t he have gone into Klipspring? They usually do on Wednesday.”

  “I can get one of the farm boys to bring over a tractor and give the battery a boost. If it is the battery. Otherwise we can tow the truck back to the farm.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “It’ll be hard going in those shoes across the fields. Why don’t you wait here?”

  “How long will you be, do you think?”

  “A half hour? Maybe longer. It depends if van Staden usually leaves the keys to the tractor where somebody can find them. I don’t know how he is about that. Some of the farmers won’t let their workers use the machinery when they’re away.”

  Märit taps a fingernail against her teeth. “No, I think I’ll go back home. Who knows how long all this will take? I can walk back to the house.”

  He looks down at her feet. “In those shoes?”

  “I’ll stay on the road.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ben tells her. “I know that you look forward to a day in town.”

  She leans forward and kisses him. “Never mind, it’s not your fault.”

  Ben takes his jacket from the front seat and locks the doors.

  “Sure you’ll be all right?” he asks Märit. “It’s quite a long walk.”

  “Of course I will. And don’t forget about tonight.”

  “Tonight? What’s on?”

  “What you didn’t do this morning.”

  Ben laughs and shakes his head. “You really are shameless. I’ll see you back at the house.”

  18

  AFTER THE PICKUP TRUCK has disappeared down the driveway and clanked across the cattle-grate, after the sound of the gate closing, then the whine of the engine fading, there is silence in the house.

  Tembi has not been alone in the house before; always Märit was nearby, or the Baas.

  The sounds of this house—the tick of the pipes in the water heater, the thunk of a piece of wood settling in the stove, the creak of the roof as it is warmed by the sun. She hears nothing else, nothing from the fields and the kraal, nothing of the birds or the leaves rustling in the eucalyptus trees, nothing of the river burbling across the stones.

  The silence gives Tembi the sensation of illness—the illness of childhood, when she lay with influenza in her mother’s hut, in the shadows, in that other place where she once lived, and the world with its sounds receded into the sliver of light that was the window, abandoning her, and she was forgotten.

  Tembi puts down the can of Silvo she is using to polish the knives and forks, drops the soft yellow cloth, pushes her chair away from the table, and leaves the kitchen to go into the main part of the house.

  In the living room she takes off the housecoat that Märit has given her, then kicks off her sandals and sits on the couch. The silence is oppressive, so she moves to the big radio that Baas Ben listens to in the morning, for the news and the weather, and turns the knob. The loud voice of a man speaking in Afrikaans fills the room, and she recoils slightly, then twists the knob until she hears music. For a moment she stands there, head inclined to the unfamiliar sound, trying to imagine the strange and faraway place where this music is made, then she turns the music down a little and crosses to the bookshelf.

  The titles on the spines of the books, the words there, are as unfamiliar and strange to her as the music, from the same faraway place. Some she knows—a dictionary, a Bible—but most are strange. She pulls down The Book of South African Birds, and pages through the illustrations. She recognizes some of the birds, the shapes and colors familiar to her from the fields and gullies around the farm.

  She sets the book back on the shelf and takes down another, with the word Durban on the spine, the name of a place that she has heard of, and this is a slim book, much leafed through. Pictures of the sea, and yellow sand beaches, and people with colorful bathing suits. But only white people are on the sand and in the waves. Except for one photograph of a smiling black man with many necklaces of shells, holding up a handful of bananas. Tembi wonders if this place Durban is only inhabited by white people.

  But it is the pictures of the sea that she lingers over, wondering if the water is the same as that in the river, sweet and soft, but the sea is so blue, with white waves, and the river here below the willow trees is dark green, sometimes brownish after heavy rain, and there are reeds and trees along the banks. The sea is wide and flat and blue, and she wonders how the taste of the salt water would be on her tongue. She imagines that at night she would be able to hear the sea inhaling and exhaling, like the rhythm of her own breathing, how it rises and falls like the flanks of some sleeping animal in the moonlight.

  The sound of an engine breaks the silence and Tembi darts quickly to the window. She peers down the driveway but there is no car. At the opposite window she sees the tractor chugging across a field, with the recognizable figure of Joshua the bossboy in the seat.

  Clutching the book in her hand, Tembi walks down the hall and opens the door to the bedroom. She stands on the threshold and looks in, where she is forbidden to enter, where Märit has told her not to enter. Immediately she sees that this is a woman’s room, and the first impression is that this room is like Märit: the colors, the scents, the textures—the secrets.

  On the bed where the sheets are tousled she sees the sheen of a blue dress. Light throws itself back from a mirror on the dresser, sparkling through an array of perfume bottles. And the smell, of soap and powder and flowers. The smell of luxury. The smell that white women have—flowery—like roses and milk and honey.

  She feels like someone who stands in front of a shop window where a cream cake rests on a stand. But always unobtainable, always on the other side of the glass. In her life, and the life of her mother and father, in the life of those people who have the same color skin as she does, there are no rooms like this. Her room has a hard earth floor, she sleeps on an iron bedstead that creaks and groans with every movement, she must sit on a wooden chair at a rickety table. There is no mirror full of glittering reflections in her room, only the small hand-mirror that reflects more shadow than light.

  Tembi steps into the room. And she sees another person there in the mirror—a stranger—like a stain amidst the finery. A shabby stranger, a person of dirt. She turns away in dismay from the wretched sight of herself.

  She runs her fingers across the jars on the dresser, the glittering bottles of perfumes and creams. She removes the stoppers and smells the contents, and the smell is too rich, too intense, too unfamiliar. Her own shar
p smell is that of sweat, wood smoke, cooking odors, earth. In one bottle of perfume the scent reminds her of the first roses that come after the dry winter, and she tilts it over her wrist, the liquid splashing over her skin and onto the carpet. The room becomes a garden of roses as the perfume coats the air.

  Now she touches the blue dress on the bed, a blue the color of the sea in the book, and she strokes the soft material for which she has no name. And when she lifts the dress in her hands and lets it caress her cheek there is no weight to the material, it is light, like the mist is light. She wraps the cloth around her, a soft blue mist, and turns to see herself in the mirror.

  Is it only the dress that changes her? she wonders. And if Märit lived in the kraal, and wore the clothes that Tembi wears, and did not have her creams and perfumes, how would she look? How would she be changed?

  She wonders if it is only the clothes that make a difference between her and Märit. In another country, not this country, would there be a difference? If she lived in a house like this one, and also went to town in a car, and also had a husband, where would be the difference between her and Märit? Only in the skin color is there a difference. And in the way that Tembi must live.

  Tembi stands in front of the mirror and unbuttons her dress. She lets it fall to the floor and surveys herself, her reflection, naked but for her panties. If Märit stood here now they would be the same. Then she reaches for the dress and draws it over her head. And it fits her as if made for her body, except a little tight in the breasts because she is fuller there than Märit.

  She looks into her own eyes in the mirror and sees herself as someone new. The woman in the blue dress is not her, she is not yet that woman. In that image behind the glass Tembi sees something she has not yet become. But will. She makes that promise to herself.

  19

  MÄRIT WALKS AWAY from the truck, back in the direction of the house, turning every now and then to look at Ben as he moves across the veldt to van Staden’s farm. Once, he turns to look back at the same time as she does, and they wave to each other. Then the road curves and when she waves a last time he is lost to sight.

  Rather than being disappointed by the turn events have taken, Märit finds herself enjoying the walk—as if she has been given an unexpected day off. There is no obligation upon her now, she doesn’t have to be at home, where there is always something that needs to be done, nor does she have to play her role in town, for it is something of a role to be the farmer’s wife, to sit with neighbors on the veranda of the hotel and listen to the gossip of the women, and answer their questions, which although phrased politely are prying and inquisitive of her personal life in a way that sometimes offends her. There is no one amongst the neighboring women with whom she has made friends. She is too different from them. And she senses that they pity her a little, that they condescend to her, as to a child, and that they think of her as too young and fragile, too inexperienced to make a success of the farm. Sometimes she thinks they want her to fail.

  Her musings are interrupted by a sudden flash of familiar blue—the kingfisher again—once more darting across the road the way it did in front of the truck. Into the trees it flashes, twice more, closer to her, back and forth before disappearing. Märit leaves the road and turns towards the trees, following the kingfisher, until she sees it again, perched on a branch overhanging the river.

  The river is wide here, but shallow, dotted with rocks that the water foams around as it flows swiftly downstream in the sunlight. Märit crosses the shingle of pebbles and finds herself a seat on a flat rock at the edge of the shore. She slips off her shoes, setting them on the rock, and lets her feet touch the surface of the moving water. A little shock of cold makes her shiver, but then, as her skin accustoms itself to the temperature, she moves her feet deeper, up to the ankles, savoring the coolness.

  The kingfisher darts away, a flicker of blue feathers above the water.

  Suddenly she wants to swim, to sink into that swift stream and feel the current against her body. The desire is like a thirst. She has no bathing suit or towel, though—and what if she were seen? But there is nobody about; the screen of trees hides her from the road, and in the other direction is open veldt. If someone were to come she would see them. The thought of removing her clothes is both a fear and a desire.

  The kingfisher flies back, dipping just above the river, free in its world.

  She unbuttons her jacket and slips it off. Then she unfastens her blouse and opens it so that the sun touches her belly. She divests herself of her brassiere, her skirt, her panties, and steps quickly into the shallows, feeling the cool swift water rise up her calves, then over her knees and thighs as she goes deeper. She crouches and immerses herself up to her shoulders, gasping at the cold.

  The river tugs at Märit’s body, gently, insistently, like a caress, urging her to submit, to give herself to the current. She clasps her arms around a rock that rises above the water, pressing her face and her shoulders and her breasts against the warm smooth stone as one would embrace a lover, and the silky motion of the river strokes her flanks and smoothes over her buttocks. Märit submits, shutting her eyes, giving herself.

  Then awareness returns, and anxiety, and the realization of where she is. Raising her head, she glances back to the rocks where her pile of clothes is gathered. How foolish to do this. What if she were seen? Releasing her embrace of the rock she scrambles back to shore, the river tugging at her thighs as if not wanting her to go. Her wet skin soaks her blouse as she slips it on. With the skirt in her hand she sits back down on the warm rock.

  The sun will dry her. Extending her limbs to the light and the warmth she leans back on her elbows. Beads of moisture speckle her pale skin and glimmer in the patch of hair between her thighs. Her eyelids droop, then shut as she basks in the heat of the sun.

  If Ben were here it would be different, she would not be half anxious, afraid of being seen, she could give herself over completely. Her thoughts turn towards the events of the morning. She wanted him so much when she woke up and saw him naked before the mirror. If he were here now they could swim together; she could clasp him, instead of unyielding stone. Märit realizes that she has never been naked outdoors with her husband. The closest they ever came was in Durban, when they swam in the ocean together, separated only by the cloth of their bathing suits.

  Every now and then she half opens her eyes and looks around, confirming that she is alone, unseen. She is aware of the nearness of the road, of the possibility of being seen, of the fact that she is breaking the rules.

  When she shuts her eyes again, a sudden memory surfaces, something long buried, like a shadow hidden in the deep current of the water. She remembers water, her skin wet and naked, and that other skin—black skin and white skin, naked together. She remembers the rules being broken.

  IT WAS THE YEAR that Märit turned fifteen—a period of transition from childhood to something else, not yet adulthood—but she sensed the differences in herself even if she did not understand them.

  Märit’s parents arranged for her to spend a few weeks with a girl named Sondra at a farm outside the city. She did not know Sondra, she did not want to go, but her father told her that it was a chance to widen her experience, and her mother told her that it was better than being cooped up in the city. Sondra was the daughter of her parents’ friends, a girl who went to a different school, a girl who was older than Märit. One morning Märit overheard her mother on the phone discussing the holiday—there was a mention of Sondra’s “crisis,” of “difficulties” being over, of Märit’s presence being a good influence on Sondra.

  From the first day it was obvious that Sondra regarded Märit as a burden to be endured. Sondra was polite, but distant, and once away from the presence of her parents, she ignored Märit completely. Friendship, confidence, intimacy were out of the question.

  The place was not a farm, but a large suburban house transplanted to the countryside, reached by a long and bumpy sand road that wound down from
the main highway. There were gardens, orchards, a swimming pool surrounded by rose beds. The rooms were dark, shadowy, silent. A grave servant came in each day to clean. Sondra’s father departed early to his job in the city and her mother was frequently away from the house on various errands of her own. Sondra spent her time reading magazines at the side of the swimming pool, stretched out in a deck chair with her eyes hidden behind dark glasses.

  All of Märit’s efforts to know Sondra were rejected. The other girl remained hidden behind an impenetrable wall. The friendship that their respective parents had hoped for did not develop. Märit retreated into silence, counting the days until she could return home.

  During the long hours of the day she wandered around the gardens and sat by the pool reading, sometimes slipping into the water when she was hot. The only other person that she ever saw was a boy who tended the gardens and cleaned the swimming pool. His name was Dollar. He was black. A boy her age, dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, dragging the hose around, pushing a wheelbarrow, skimming the fallen leaves from the surface of the swimming pool.

  At first Märit barely took notice of him, then she watched him, interested in his presence. Sometimes he looked back at her and smiled shyly. After a few days he began to nod and mumble a greeting to her.

  Out of necessity, out of desperation, Märit turned to him for company.

  They were reserved at first, not sure how to act in each other’s company; she was of the house and he was of the garden, she was white and he was not.

  Sometimes, when Sondra was not in her usual place at the pool, Dollar would crouch next to Märit where she reclined in her deck chair and share an illicit cigarette with her. Sometimes he would cut a sprig of mimosa from the garden and present it to her.

  One very hot day, when the cement flagstones burned her feet and there was no shade, and she could find relief only in the blue water of the swimming pool, Dollar appeared, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with soil. Perspiration stood out in glistening beads on his face and the shirt on his back was dark with sweat. When he saw Märit in the pool he stopped and looked at the water with such longing in his face that she impulsively called out, “Dollar! Come and swim.”