A Blade of Grass

by Lewis Desoto

  “Is it Joshua you are worried about?”

  “I don’t like him,” Tembi answers.

  “Never mind Joshua. Give me the keys.” Märit holds out her hand.

  Tembi says nothing, only waits as Märit unlocks the doors and pushes them wide open to reveal the tractor. The smell of gasoline and oil hangs thick in the confines of the shed.

  Märit climbs up onto the tractor and settles herself in the seat, placing her hands on the big steering wheel. She remembers riding with Ben, standing next to him as the tractor jolted across the veldt, his hands capable and confident as he worked the controls. He’d asked her if she wanted to drive the machine, but she was happy to stand behind him with her hands on his shoulders and her body leaning into his strong back.

  Her feet find the accelerator and the brake, she presses down on the clutch, which is stiff and takes more effort than she expects. Using her right hand she works the heavy gear lever through its positions, remembering how Ben did it.

  “We can walk to town,” Tembi calls up to Märit.

  “No.” Märit turns the ignition key and presses the starter button.

  The engine coughs and erupts into life with a roar, filling the shed with oily exhaust smoke. Märit struggles the gear into position and releases the clutch slowly as the tractor trembles under her, the large steering wheel vibrating between her hands. She lets the clutch out a little farther and presses her other foot down on the gas pedal.

  The clutch springs up under her foot and the tractor lurches forward out the doors, narrowly missing Tembi. For a moment Märit has the tractor in her control as it veers to the left, and then the pedals seem to lock under her feet and the big round steering wheel convulses violently, spinning with a will of its own. Märit jams her foot down on the brake, sending the tractor into a sharp turn. The right wheel grinds against the side of the shed with a terrible shearing noise and the tractor shudders to a halt. A puff of smoke spurts from the engine with a smell of burned oil.

  Märit slumps forward over the steering wheel and puts her hands over her eyes.

  “Märit, are you hurt?” Tembi clambers up next to her, shaking at her shoulder.

  “I’m all right.” She slams her hand on the steering wheel. “Damn thing!”

  Märit climbs down with trembling legs. “It doesn’t matter.”

  A shouting from the direction of the kraal interrupts them, and Joshua appears, arms flailing in the air as he runs towards the house.

  “What are you doing with this tractor? This is for my work!” He turns on Märit, furious. “This is for working, not for women to play with!”

  He bangs on the side of the engine cowling with the flat of his hand. “Look what you’ve done! Breaking this tractor. Stupid. Stupid.” Spittle flies from his mouth as he shouts. “Now I’m going to have to fix it. How I’m going to do that, eh, tell me?”

  The women cower under his anger and he advances on them, shaking his fist in the air. “Who says you can take my tractor and break it like this? Stupid!”

  He is truly furious, striding back and forth, slamming his hand on the engine cowling, then turning to shake his fist at them. The spittle has gathered in a white froth at the corners of his mouth.

  “That’s enough!” Märit shouts. “Don’t you dare talk to us like that! Did you pay for this tractor? Is it yours? You are employed to work on this farm, nothing more.”

  Then his tone becomes apologetic, almost wheedling. “But this is for my job. How must I do my work now without a tractor? You tell me the answer to that.” His anger gets the better of him again and his voice rises. “You think you can fix this tractor?”

  “Don’t concern yourself so much with what I can do, Joshua. See to your own business.”

  He looks sideways at her, unsure, his expression shifting between the accustomed deference to white authority and a still undecided limit to his own power. Märit knows this is a crisis of authority. If he wins, then she is lost.

  She puts her hands on her hips and glares back at him defiantly. “Since the tractor is broken, you can find something else to do. You don’t need to ride up and down on it all day as if this is your farm. And if you don’t like the way I do things here, then you can leave. Do you understand?”

  He looks away, not meeting her eyes.

  “Do you understand?” Märit repeats.

  “Yes, Missus,” he mutters, still not looking at her.

  “Good. Then go and see to your own work.”

  He marches away, shaking his head.

  “Come,” Märit says, taking Tembi’s hand. “Forget about him.”

  As they go up the veranda steps Tembi glances back, just in time to see Joshua as he rounds the corner of the house, and he too looks back, with a sly, calculating expression on his face.

  33

  BECAUSE THEY NO LONGER have a vehicle, because Märit does not want to ask her neighbor for help, because they are two women alone, they must walk to town.

  “Maybe it will be hard for you,” Tembi tells her. “But I am used to walking.”

  “I don’t mind walking. In fact, I want to walk. If others can do it, so can I.”

  “You must wear shoes,” Tembi advises.

  “You’re not wearing any.”

  Tembi laughs. “Because my feet are strong. I have always walked without shoes.”

  “Then I will too.”

  “You will need a doek to cover your head. I will give you one of mine.” She returns from her room with a rectangle of red cloth, which she fastens over Märit’s head, tying it in a knot at the back. “It’s not because of your hair or anything. Women always wear a doek when we go to town, so that we can look respectable. It’s our way.” Tembi fastens her own head-covering, of the same red hue but more faded. She stands next to Märit in front of the mirror, considers their appearance, then slips off a few of the copper bracelets she wears on her left wrist and slides them onto Märit’s hand. “There…now nobody can look at us and think we are just wanderers on the road. We are respectable women.”

  “Like sisters,” Märit answers.

  Tembi fetches a couple of straw baskets from the pantry, while Märit retrieves the cash box from its place in the office and takes out a handful of banknotes. Tembi brings Märit’s sandals from the bedroom and tosses them into the basket. “Just in case.”

  The road is a sandy road, of a light, yellowish sand, sometimes rust-colored in stretches, and it winds between the flat-topped acacia trees and the long grasses of the veldt that are a pale ochre color at this time of the year and ripple like water in the light breeze.

  Märit feels the ground under her feet, the way the sand falls across her toes, the occasional small stone pressing into her sole. Her feet are less soft with each passing day, for she never wears shoes now.

  The touch of the sand reminds her of childhood, the freedom of being without the heavy black shoes she was required to wear to school, and today, like a child given an unexpected holiday, she feels the same freedom, the same pleasure, with its faint echoes of guilt.

  Above the koppie the tall finger of rock rises into the sky, casting its elongated shadow across the road towards the women.

  “The Duiwelskop is almost touching us,” Märit remarks.

  Tembi looks up quizzically and Märit points at the koppie. “That rock, and its shadow. The Devil’s Head. Duiwelskop.”

  “We don’t call it that,” Tembi says. “We have another name, Isitimane, in the Zulu language.”

  “Is-i-ti-mane,” Märit tries out the pronunciation. “And what does it mean?”

  “Sometimes, the girls are putting together a string of beads to give to a man they want to love, or they can wear it themselves to show people something. They put different colors of beads next to each other, to tell a story, because each color can mean something. What you want to tell to the man you can say with the beads. The white bead is called ithambo, bone, that means love, or the red one, igazi, blood, means tears and longing. Isiti
mane is a color in the story.”

  “Which color?”

  “The black bead is called isitimane, shadow. When a girl puts it in a necklace it shows that she is sad or disappointed.” Tembi looks up at the koppie. “This rock is throwing a shadow of loneliness.” As she says this, she falls silent, recalling that early morning when she stood here at the farm gate with her mother, who walked away into the dawn, into a different kind of shadow.

  Looking up at the koppie Märit wonders at the fact that two separate languages have both found words of darkness and isolation for this outcrop of stone. Will this farm always lie under the shadow of grief and loneliness and disappointment?

  Märit turns and points at the sign that Ben painted on the post of the gate. “And what about the farm itself? I know it was called Duiwelskop before we named it Kudufontein, but what do your people call it?”

  “Lebone—that means ‘light’ in the SeSotho language. Like a candle. I don’t know why they call it that. Maybe a light against the shadow of Isitimane.”

  They walk on, away from the shadow that hangs over the farm. The river is to one side, behind a screen of willow trees where small green weaverbirds dart between the bulbous nests hanging from the branches.

  The road curves away from the river, flanked now by the sorghum and maize fields of the van Staden farm. Just above the tips of the sorghum a long-tailed blackbird flaps with a strange, ungainly grace, the long tail feathers trailing across the grain.

  “I know the name of that one,” Märit says. “Sakabula bird.”

  “Widow Bird,” Tembi says.

  “Like me.”

  Tembi glances at Märit’s face. “Are you sorry for how your life is now?”

  “I don’t think about it much. What can I do about what happened—about the past? Nothing. I want to go forward, like this road.”

  “Every road moves in two directions.”

  “Not today. Today this road only goes to Klipspring.”

  “Yes. And we call the town Pulane. That means ‘rain.’ It rains more in the town than on the veldt. That is why everything is so green there. All the jacaranda trees, and the flowers.”

  Märit mouths the word silently. Everything in this country is called by more than one name. It all depends on who is doing the naming.

  Tembi touches Märit lightly on the arm. “We can go to the place in Pulane where your husband is buried. I can visit him with you.”

  “You are a good person, Tembi,” Märit says, touched by this solicitude. “Where does your goodness come from?”

  Tembi shakes her head.

  “No, I truly believe that. There is a goodness in you that I don’t have. I know that you have a good heart, and I’m lucky that you’re my friend. I feel that I don’t deserve your friendship.”

  Tembi looks down, embarrassed. “You are good also, Märit. And strong. You will find these things in yourself even if you cannot see them now.”

  They walk on in silence, Märit thinking about the town, about the grave in the small cemetery. If she thinks about Ben, when she allows herself to, and knows that she is a woman alone, then doubt and fear come over her. And then she knows herself to be weak.

  She turns to Tembi. “Do you think about your mother? Do you miss her?”

  “I feel sorry for her, that she had to die.”

  “Do you feel sorry for yourself?”

  “No. Because I can live, I can be here in the world. And I know that my mother dwells in the House of the Lord. Maybe that is better for her. But I am here.”

  “We are here,” Märit says emphatically, linking her arm with Tembi’s.

  Just before they reach the junction to the tarred road that leads to Klipspring, where the sand road becomes tarmac, they hear the sound of a car approaching from behind and they both step to the side of the road, turning to look back.

  The car slows, and there are two white women in the front seat, women Märit vaguely recognizes from seeing them in town, perhaps they were even at the funeral, but she does not know them, not their names or on which farm they live.

  Märit raises a hand in greeting, in hope of being offered a ride into town. For a moment it appears that they will stop to offer a ride, but then the eyes of the women in the car move between Märit and Tembi, and there is confusion on the faces, and startled apprehension, and the car quickly accelerates to the junction and turns onto the main road. As it turns, a child’s face appears in the back window, a little girl with a round, serious, plain face, and a small doll clutched in one hand. Märit waves and smiles wistfully, for the image of the face in the window reminds her of her own childhood, of interminable journeys alone in the back seat with only a doll for company and her parents engaged in a conversation that either ignored her or excluded her. She sees her own boredom and loneliness in that child’s face. And so she waves.

  The child does not wave back, or smile, but instead sticks her tongue out at Märit. Not playfully, but with an expression of malice that is all the more shocking because it is on the face of a child. Märit drops her hand, chastened.

  The sudden dust thrown up by the car envelops Märit and Tembi. Tembi, practiced at avoiding dust thrown up by passing vehicles, tucks her head in against her shoulder while cupping a hand over her nose and mouth, but Märit coughs and splutters, tasting the dry texture of sand in her mouth.

  She remembers how many times she drove past people walking on the side of the road and never gave a thought to the dust thrown up by the car, and never gave a thought that one of them might be tired and in need of a lift. Those who walked on the side of the road were invisible, mere fixtures of the landscape. There were two worlds; some walked, some did not.

  Märit spits out the dust from her mouth. “I need to drink some water.”

  “There is no place for water on this road, you must wait until we reach Klipspring. Unless we go back to the river.”

  “No, let’s go on.” She wipes a hand across her lips. “I can wait.”

  “I have a naartjie,” Tembi says, producing a small tangerine from her pocket.

  Märit peels it, the citrus tang pungent in the dry air, dividing the fruit before passing half to Tembi, and tosses the skin into the grass, where it is bright and orange amongst the yellow and brown khakibos. The juice is sweet in Märit’s mouth, but also acidic, and it leaves her throat with a faint ache and her thirst accentuated.

  The road is flat and straight, glaring with a metallic sheen as it rises to a distant ridge. On the veldt the doringboom is the only tree that grows, all thorn and leathery leaves. This is unfarmed land, hard, dry—a land of thirst and stone. In the distance ahead, mirages shimmer on the road like promised pools of water.

  Märit turns to look back at the long road and sees a dark, moving blur in the distant, wavering mirage where the road merges with the pale sky. When she looks over her shoulder again a few minutes later the blur has taken on a shape, and as it approaches becomes a figure on a bicycle.

  Märit stops.

  The cyclist draws nearer, and Märit sees it is a black man, wearing only a pair of faded trousers, pedaling hard with his head down. He does not look up as he sweeps past the two women with the soft sound of rubber tires on tarmac, and Märit only has a quick glimpse of his face, which is clenched with effort, his features glistening with sweat.

  Tembi looks up, surprised, as he passes, and stops to watch his bent back and pumping legs until his receding form is a smudge in the distance that merges again with the pale sky. Neither woman comments.

  A few minutes later a gray van appears from the same direction, traveling very fast. As it whips by with a crackle of static, the long radio antenna on the roof bent almost double in the slipstream, Märit sees the uniformed policemen in the front seat of the vehicle. Hot gusts of gasoline fumes buffet Märit’s face.

  “Are they chasing that man?” Märit looks at Tembi inquiringly, but the reply is only a shake of the head. “Some trouble. I don’t know.”

  The whin
e of the engine slowly fades into the dry silence. Cicadas buzz with a monotonous drone in the grass. The women walk on.

  When they finally crest the ridge, Klipspring is visible below them—a small town of white walls and green trees and the silver flash of tin roofs and the glint of the railway line twisting across the veldt towards the foothills. The tower of the church rises over the center of the town, marking Wolmarans Street. Beyond the town lie the blue hills, and beyond the hills is the frontier—another country.

  “Not far now,” Tembi announces.

  “I have to put my sandals on.” Märit takes them from the basket and pauses a moment to fasten the straps around her ankles.

  As they descend, longing for the relief from the sun that will be found in the shaded streets of the town, Märit looks up to her left, to the back side of the ridge, where a farmhouse is situated. It is one of the oldest farms in the district, called Geelblom, Yellow Flower, belonging to a family named Potgieter. Märit has always admired the house, with its attractive facade of high gables and a shaded pergola in the Cape Dutch style. She admires it every time she visits Klipspring, this prosperous house on prosperous land.

  But what she sees now, in the midst of the ochre grass and the green of the trees, is a black scorch across the slope. Where the house had been is a ruin of blackened walls and rafters.

  “Look!” She grasps Tembi’s arms. “The house. Oh God, they’ve had a fire.”

  “The fields too.” Tembi points to a burned scar seared across the land.

  A chill trembles across Märit’s skin, as if the sun has been blotted out by a dark cloud.

  The day suddenly seems filled with omens: the accident with the tractor, that child pulling a malicious face, the desperate man on the bicycle, fleeing from something. And now this. Isitimane is upon the land, the darkness of fear. Something has fallen out of the day, leaving a hollow feeling in her chest. Standing here with Tembi on this open road, Märit feels small and exposed—both of them, small and exposed and defenseless.