A Blade of Grass

by Lewis Desoto

  AFTERWARDS, when their hands and faces are greasy with the fat and the juices from the barbecued meat, and their bellies are full, and their limbs are relaxed, they recline around the glowing fire under the stars, sated, content.

  The brandy bottle has made its rounds; the sweet and fiery liquid complements the charred, smoky meat. Tembi declines the bottle when Märit passes it to her. Märit drinks, even though she is already light-headed, then passes it to Khoza. He swallows, smacks his lips, and settles the bottle between his feet.

  Khoza then produces a small leather pouch from his pocket and pours dark tobacco into a sheaf of cigarette paper. He rolls the tobacco into a thin cylinder, licks the seam of the paper to seal it, and then lights the cigarette with a flaming twig. The cloud of smoke he exhales is pungent, like the smell of khakibos when it is burned off the fields.

  “Give me one of your cigarettes, Khoza,” Märit says. “I don’t have any more.”

  “This is strong tobacco, Märit. Dagga. Are you sure?”

  “You always smoke mine, so now you can let me have one of yours.”

  Khoza shakes out tobacco into the paper and repeats the process of rolling it into a cylinder. Just before he licks the seam of the cigarette he looks up at her and says, “You don’t mind that your lips will touch a cigarette from the mouth of a black man?”

  “I’m not asking you to kiss me,” she retorts.

  Tembi giggles.

  “No, of course not,” Khoza answers with a chuckle, handing the cigarette to her.

  Märit looks away, irritated that she has responded so flippantly.

  The taste of the tobacco is harsh, resinous, like burning leaves, and sends her into a fit of coughing when she inhales.

  “Too strong for the white lady?” Khoza says.

  When she has recovered, Märit takes another puff, smaller, and inhales less deeply. She suppresses a cough when she sees Khoza is still regarding her with amusement.

  A chill has settled on the night and Märit edges closer to the fire. The flames dance and flicker amongst the red coals of the fire. No other light breaks the darkness around the three people. For all Märit knows, theirs is the only fire burning in the night that lies over the country. This flame here, burning softly on the African veldt in the African darkness, as it might have burned aeons ago in the same way—only the stars, a fire, the figures huddled close around the warmth.

  When she raises her eyes the stars seem a long way off. “It’s cold,” Märit says. Her voice echoes oddly, as if muffled and coming from outside her. She looks over at Tembi and Khoza, but neither of them answers. Did she speak? she wonders. Or did she only think she spoke?

  She draws again on the resinous tobacco, and the smoke seems to lift her limbs so that they become light, weightless. If she turned and looked into the darkness she would see herself floating out there.

  “Do you want some dagga, Tembi?” Khoza says. Märit watches as Tembi takes the cigarette and inhales a small puff.

  “I didn’t know you smoked, Tembi,” Märit says.

  “I don’t.” She breaks into a fit of giggles.

  Khoza begins to laugh too.

  “What’s the joke?” Märit asks, and her own voice seems almost foreign to her. Across the fire his eyes sparkle red, and his laughter is impish. He looks like a creature of the night, crouched there by the fire.

  Märit turns her head and looks at Tembi, and the gesture of her turning seems to take a long time, as if the air is thick and viscous. It’s the cigarette, she thinks, it’s distorting my senses.

  Tembi is leaning forward over the fire with absorbed concentration, a serene expression on her face. Her skin is tinted gold by the small flames, but her eyes are lost in caverns of deep shadow.

  What do you see? Märit wants to ask, but the effort of forming the words defeats her; the words will not come. She turns her head slowly in the thick air and looks down into the embers, following Tembi’s gaze.

  In the heart of the flames, where the coals glow crimson, she sees to her astonishment a miniature city, all aglow in crimson, with ancient turrets and towers and burning walls. The city seems familiar, a city that she knows, where she might even once have lived. A city remembered, but from a dream. As she watches, the coals shift in a little burst of flame and the towers and turrets collapse and crumble into fire.

  A small cry of distress escapes from Märit. The walls crumble and the towers disappear into flame. Like a city from the Bible, she thinks, like the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, remembering it from Sunday school when she was a girl. She sees the city from above, the burning city on the plain, as God must have seen it, the vengeful God who destroyed the city and turned the woman who looked back at the flame into a pillar of salt. The vengeful God, who destroyed the cities on the plain. Will we now be destroyed like the city in the Bible? Märit wonders.

  She shakes her head. The cigarette is making her even more confused. She looks across the fire and sees the red eyes watching her. His black skin and his red eyes and his red tongue.

  “Märit.” His voice comes, soft, a honeyed whisper.

  “What?” Her voice too replies in a whisper, as if she will be overheard.

  “You feel it, Märit?”

  “What?”

  “You feel the dagga, the herb? You floating up there yet?”

  She looks down at the cigarette in her hand.

  “That’s what you’re smoking,” he whispers. “The herb that the small people grow in the jungle.”

  “What?” she repeats, unable to bring forth more than that one word.

  “Märit,” he whispers, insinuating his voice into her consciousness.

  Märit tosses the cigarette into the fire.

  “Hey!” Khoza exclaims. “If you don’t want it you can give it back. What a waste!”

  Tembi begins to giggle again. They seem to Märit like children, Tembi and Khoza, like two small malicious children, laughing at her with impish faces. Little demons, laughing at her.

  Märit is suddenly anxious. She does not know who they are, these two people. She thought she knew them, but now she realizes she doesn’t. She rises to her feet, suddenly afraid, aware of their conspiracy against her. She is afraid and lost and she stumbles backwards, anxious to be away from them. But there is nowhere for her to go.

  She hurries towards the house, silent and dark and cold, yet she cannot enter, because it too is strange, with all the details and evidence of her false life. The woman who lives in there is not her. But if the Märit who lives in the house is not her, then who is the Märit that stands in the night outside?

  She creeps up the steps of the veranda and curls into the rocking chair, folding her knees up to her chin and clasping her arms tight around them so that she is curled into something small and hidden and sad, with her back to the fire and the demons and the night.

  Märit looks up to the stars for comfort. They see me, she thinks. The stars see me and thus I can never be lost.

  A sudden realization comes to Märit, curled up and small as she is in the vastness of the night. She will never leave the farm. It is the one place on the earth for her. It is here where the stars know her. She will die in this place. The knowledge that this will be her destiny is absolute.

  Märit takes some comfort from the knowledge, because it means she is home. The farm is where she belongs. This is all there is—this is all of the world, here in the chill of the night under the stars.

  But can she endure such a fate alone? Does she have the strength and the courage?

  At last she rises and walks back to the glow of the fire, to the two people there, who are the only ones that share this night with her.

  46

  THE STARS ARE JUST THE STARS, the night is just the night. The boy and the girl sitting by the fire are not devils but just a boy and a girl—just Khoza and Tembi.

  Märit sits down across from them and stretches her hands towards the warmth. There are no burning cities in the coals, no demons.
The effects of smoking the dagga have worn off.

  Tembi yawns. “It’s late. We should go in.”

  But none of them stirs from the fire.

  Eventually Tembi rises to her feet. “I am going to bed.”

  “Hamba kahle,” Khoza says. He stands next to her a moment and lets his hand rest on her arm. “Sleep well.”

  “Yes,” Märit adds. “Good night, Tembi.”

  Tembi looks down at Märit, a slight frown creasing her brow. “Aren’t you going to bed?”

  “Soon.”

  Tembi suppresses another yawn and moves away towards the house.

  They watch her shape retreat into the darkness.

  Khoza collects a few more twigs and branches and tosses them into the embers, then crouches to blow the flames into life. Märit studies his face. She sees no threat there, no evil—he is only a young man, and his bravado is that of a man who is young.

  “Who are you, Khoza? Where do you come from?”

  Khoza pokes at the fire with a stick, then tosses it into the flames and turns to face her. “I will tell you a story, Märit. It’s a kind of ghost story. About another man in another place. We can call him Sizwe. In the time of this story he has a job, as a waiter at a hotel in the countryside, where there is a river and a swimming pool, and people come to take safaris.

  In the mornings, on his first break of the day, Sizwe likes to go and sit on the slope above the river, where he can see into the distance. He sits there and smokes a cigarette and thinks his thoughts. The view reminds him of the country of his childhood, in another time, in another place.

  One morning a man comes out of the trees that surround the river and walks straight up to where Sizwe sits. The man carries an AK-47 rifle in his hands, the kind that soldiers have. He wears a ragged camouflage shirt and a pair of torn shorts, and on his feet a pair of sneakers, too small for him, so that he has cut away the tips to give his toes room.

  Sizwe looks at this man coming from the trees with his gun and then he looks away. He sits very still.

  ‘Sawubona, brother,’ the man says to Sizwe. ‘Greetings.’

  When Sizwe makes no reply, the man stops and the barrel of the gun shifts so that it points at Sizwe. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he says. ‘Are you alone here?’

  Sizwe says nothing. The cigarette in his hand is burning his fingers. He lifts it carefully to his mouth to take a puff. He sees clouds forming on the peaks of the distant mountains and he knows there will be rain soon. If not this day, then tomorrow. Or the day after.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ the man says, and his eyes search the bougainvillea bushes behind Sizwe. ‘Do you work up there, in that hotel?’

  Sizwe lets his cigarette fall to the ground and he grinds it out with the tip of his polished black shoe.

  The man says, ‘I am hungry, brother. Do you have any food with you?’

  He is more of a boy than a man, but he has tired eyes and there is the knowledge of killing in them.

  Carefully, Sizwe takes from his pocket a pouch of tobacco and his rolling papers. He stretches and puts the tobacco and papers and matches on the ground. The young man crouches, still pointing the gun at Sizwe, and scoops up the tobacco. He limps away a few paces, then leans his gun against his thigh while he makes himself a cigarette.

  ‘We were five in the beginning,’ the boy says. ‘Three days ago. They caught us at the Tugela, when we were crossing the river. An ambush. We never even saw them, just the bullets coming across the water like hailstones, and my comrades falling. I heard the soldiers on the riverbank laughing afterwards.’

  On the side of his calf there is a deep gash. He sucks at the cigarette with hunger. Sizwe can smell the tiredness on him, and the sour smell of his fear.

  ‘I need some food, I need something to eat. You can get me some food from the kitchen. I know you work in that hotel.’ He points to Sizwe’s starched white jacket and his black trousers and shiny shoes—the uniform of a waiter. ‘I don’t care if it’s from the rubbish bins. Anything I can eat, brother. Nobody will miss some food from the rubbish bins, will they?’

  Sizwe doesn’t answer. He is looking at the distant hills and the clouds that remind him of the mists that came up the valley in the mornings when he was a boy.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ the boy with the gun says to Sizwe. He springs forward and presses the barrel against Sizwe’s cheek. The metal is warm from the boy’s hand. ‘Don’t you know how to talk?’

  Sizwe looks down at the tips of his own shoes.

  ‘I could kill you,’ the boy shouts. ‘Right now.’

  Sizwe knows that sometimes it is possible to kill someone without considering whether the person deserves to die.

  Then the boy’s finger curls down on the trigger and the hammer falls with a click. Sizwe’s heart stops. When it beats again it beats like an antelope running, hooves drumming on the ground.

  The boy staggers backwards with a cry of strange laughter. ‘I don’t have any bullets. They only gave us three each…I used them all up…trying to shoot a fucking antelope.’ He screeches with laughter, then slumps down on the grass and pulls off his beret and scratches hard at his scalp.

  Sizwe gets to his feet. He brushes away the bits of grass from the seat of his pants. The boy is shivering in the hot sun, and flies have settled on the sores at his ankles. He has the look of death on him. He is already dead. He is a ghost.

  Sizwe leaves his tobacco and rolling paper and matches on the ground near the boy and walks back up the path to the hotel.

  He is in the kitchen, washing his hands at the big sink, when the manager calls and beckons for Sizwe to follow him.

  On the gravel driveway outside the hotel is a Saracen armored car, and soldiers, and an officer in a slouch hat with a pistol strapped to his waist. The rest of the staff are lined up on the gravel driveway. The officer points at Sizwe.

  ‘You. Come here, hey. Where are you coming from just now, hey?’

  ‘By the river, Baas.’ Sizwe keeps his eyes down, careful not to look the officer in the face.

  ‘And what are you doing there down by the river?’

  ‘I was looking at the land.’

  ‘What business do you have looking at the land?’

  ‘It reminds me of the country of my childhood, Baas.’

  ‘Who else is down there? Did you speak to anyone? A man with a gun? Hey?’

  Sizwe shakes his head. ‘I did not see a man.’ And that is true. He might have seen a ghost, passing briefly before his eyes, but not a man.

  ‘What did you tell him? That you would help him? Where is he hiding?’

  ‘I did not see any man.’

  The officer snorts with disbelief and shoves Sizwe away. ‘You monkeys are all the same. Bloody liars.’

  The armored car starts up and the officer climbs aboard.

  ‘Back to the dining room,’ the manager tells Sizwe as the vehicle departs. ‘It’s time to serve lunch.’

  Only one table is occupied in Sizwe’s section, for this is not the high season—an older couple and a young woman he supposes to be their daughter. She is close to his own age. Sizwe sets the menu in front of them, and three glasses of ice water, and a bowl of spiced groundnuts. Each time he reaches across the table, the young woman turns her face and edges her body away from him. He has the impression that she is holding her breath.

  When Sizwe brings the salads and sets a plate in front of the girl, she wrinkles her face and mutters to her mother, ‘Ugh, he smells. They should make the staff here bathe more often.’

  Once out of sight behind the kitchen door Sizwe lifts his sleeve to his nose and inhales. Is it the scent of the boy by the river she smells? Or his own fear?

  A brief series of loud bangs sounds from the direction of the river. Thunder already, Sizwe thinks. The rain will come soon.

  The chef rings the bell to notify Sizwe that his order is ready: two roast beef for the man and woman, grilled chicken for the girl. Sizwe carries out the two
plates of roast beef. Back in the kitchen he fetches a silver tray, puts the plate of grilled chicken on it, along with silverware, ice water, a basket of breadsticks, and a linen napkin. He carries the tray out the back entrance, around the side of the hotel, and down to the place where he likes to sit and look at the distant hills and remember the time of his childhood.

  The boy is not where Sizwe left him. The tobacco pouch and the cigarette papers are lying in the same place on the grass, but not the boy. Sizwe carries the tray further down the slope towards the river until he finds the boy’s body under a wild fig tree.

  There are three gaping holes in the boy’s shirt, each one ringed with a circle of blood and burned cloth from where the muzzle of a rifle must have pressed against his chest.

  Sizwe sets his tray down carefully on the grass. He unlaces the boy’s sneakers and removes them, then tugs the ragged khaki shorts from the thin hips, and lastly unbuttons the shirt, until the boy lies naked.

  Then Sizwe removes his own starched white jacket, his own shirt, his pressed black trousers, his shined shoes. When he too is naked he dresses himself in the boy’s rags. With the tip of a finger he touches his own chest through the bullet holes in the shirt. Now he dresses the dead boy: pressed pants, clean white shirt, starched serving jacket, shined black shoes.

  The boy’s sneakers are too small for Sizwe, even with the toes cut away, so he goes barefoot, the way he did when he walked through the mists beside the river of his childhood. He carries the tray back to the hotel, entering through the front doors this time, then across the carpeted lobby and straight into the dining room.

  An abrupt silence falls upon the room. All the talking stops as Sizwe marches past the diners in his ragged uniform. At the table where the young white woman sits waiting for her lunch, Sizwe sets the tray down. He pulls out a chair and seats himself across from her.

  He waits for the young woman to look at him. She glances around the dining room, holding her head to one side, as if it pains her to face him. And when she looks at him, only then, when she is looking straight into his eyes, does Sizwe begin to eat.