African Laughter

by Doris Lessing

  The road is almost empty. Is the standard of driving better? Yes, much. Have the unlicenced rattle-traps been cleared off the roads? Yes, but there are still plenty of licenced ones. Do you remember there was no petrol in the pumps, because the South Africans–well, all right, Renamo–kept cutting the pipeline?

  ‘Yes, you’re right, they did–but now our troops guard the pipelines.’

  ‘If you live in a country you hardly notice changes.’

  ‘What changes? Are things really so different?’

  In London I wait for visitors, and then ask, ‘What changes have you seen since you were here last?’ They tell me, and I say, ‘Really, are you sure?’

  In Mutare we stop to shop, and then off we go into the mountains. I am watching for baboons.

  ‘Do you still have a man out with a gun shooting wild pig and baboons?’

  The Coffee Farmer replies, with that small smile that goes with the pleasure of deflating sentimentalists, ‘No, I don’t need one. Luckily the leopards are back in the hills and they keep the baboons down for us.’

  And now the hillside in the mountains, and from the verandahs we look down on mountains and hills, the lakes, the rivers–water, water, because of the rains. And so close you’d think you could throw a stone at it, the mountain that is in Mozambique.

  ‘Do the Mozambique rebels come through here?’

  ‘They were around a few months ago, we think. But all during the War the ‘terrs’ were coming back and forth across our farms and we never knew it. Now they tell us and we have a good laugh.’

  ‘Do the Mozambique peasants still come across the border to get food?’

  ‘Poor bastards, yes they do, they’re starving down there, don’t forget they are coming to get food from their own brothers.’

  The ghosts of the two young white native commissioners dicing over a map, one Rhodesian, one Portuguese, almost appear, but decide not to.

  ‘And the battalion that was here, driving you all mad?’ ‘They’ve gone, thank God.’

  ‘What other changes?’

  ‘Let’s see.’

  The servant, a new one, brings out tea, brings out drinks, sets it all on the table, we are introduced, and off he goes to cook dinner.

  We sit and watch while the evening light models the landscape.

  ‘Let’s see.’

  There are a couple of newcomers–whites.

  ‘Any blacks?’

  A quick look. A laugh. ‘Didn’t you know? Tekere got rid of all the Squatters. It was Edgar Tekere who threw them out. The hillsides where they were trying to grow mealies and making all that erosion–they are healing themselves. I’ll take you to see them. The forest is coming back.’

  ‘So you don’t hate Tekere any more?’

  ‘Hate Edgar Tekere? Certainly not. He’s a good chap.’

  ‘How many Squatters were there, do you suppose?’

  ‘Probably several hundred. Well, it was ridiculous wasn’t it? No idea of conservation, no idea of…if you’re going to farm in mountain country then you’ve got to know what you are doing.’

  ‘Yes, yes, all right…Did you know the blacks think of you as very rich? Those rich Vumba farmers, they say.’

  ‘Do they! Well, most of us nearly went bankrupt last season. It was a terrible season. Did you know that the X’s just saved their farm? They had the best crop of kiwi fruit ever, but the prices went to nothing because all the Third World countries are growing kiwi fruit, it is grown so easily–as for us coffee farmers we are surviving only because we grow quality coffee–Arabica. Did you know our coffee is a favourite with the buyers?’

  The pride of old Southern Rhodesia, the pride of new Zimbabwe, rings in his voice. We always did know how to do things–is the unvoiced message.

  What else?

  ‘We are putting in another dam. Another drought like the last and we’ll be done for.’

  He tells this story. A certain new length of pipeline was losing its rubber seals and gushing water. Someone was stealing the rubber. ‘We put our chaps on to find out who was stealing…’

  ‘Wait a minute, what exactly does that mean?’

  ‘Never mind. Well, if you must know, we found out which of the kids had new catapults in the school playground. We went to the headmaster. We told him he had to punish the boys. The trouble was, the kids had already been beaten by their fathers. So they were beaten twice. They won’t go stealing our rubber again. But I keep remembering what fun I used to have with my catapult when I was a kid.’

  So I tell the Chekhov story about the peasant who steals nuts from the railway sleepers. The local landowner is the magistrate and he asks the peasant why he does this dangerous thing? There have been train accidents, has he never thought it is his fault people have been killed? ‘Well, your honour,’ he says, ‘it’s like this. I like to fish. Those nuts from the sleepers make perfect sinkers for catching some kinds of fish.’ ‘Do they?’ exclaims the landowner. ‘What kinds? I didn’t know that.’ He likes to go fishing too. The peasant and the landowner discuss the different depths certain fish are to be found in the rivers, what bait they like, the best sinkers to use on the lines. They are expert, know everything about fish and their ways. But the time comes when the magistrate has to take over from the landowner, and he sentences the peasant to so many years exile. The man goes off, incredulous: he cannot believe that this fellow fisherman who has been talking to him man to man about the ways of fish, is now turning on him. ‘But I have no alternative,’ says the magistrate. ‘You stole the nuts, didn’t you?’

  The Coffee Farmer listens to this tale with his characteristic small smile: Yes, well, that’s how things are, whether you people like it or not!

  Easy to say, ‘A story that could have come from old Rhodesia’ if it were not that savage beatings regulate the new schools. It is against the law, but in some countries–Britain for one–adults seem to feel beating children is their right.

  Jack later wrote, ‘He has gone, and the new headmaster is in. He works hard, and so far spends all his time in the school. But he drinks and beats the kids. He beats them so hard we…’ (meaning the white ex-pat teachers) ‘go to him to ask if it is necessary. He beats the small kids too, even if they are late because the rivers are up because of rain.’

  Whenever you meet teachers they talk, horrified, of the beatings.

  ‘Did they beat their children in the old days?’

  ‘Yes, they did. And the women too. Incredible beatings. Horrible. Terrible. When we expostulate they think, oh, that’s just a Honkey talking.’

  All right, so what else has happened?

  It takes hours of gossip to catch up with it all.

  We eat supper early. We go to bed early. We get up before the sun. I look to see if the vervet monkey is in his tree down the hill, so we can watch the sunrise together, but the tree has gone the way of all trees, and perhaps the monkey too. Vervet monkeys do appear briefly on the edges of the clearing, play, chasing each other, in the branches–disappear. Youngsters. Not a philosopher among them.

  The animals I met last time? Clever little Vicky was run over by a drunk driver at the Club. Old Annie the bull terrier was killed by a wild pig. The lanky ridgeback with legs that splayed and slipped about over the polished cement turned out to be too stupid to live, and found an early grave. The little black cat was allowed to keep a kitten from her last litter but the father was a bush cat, and this kitten, a strong brave young male, took to the bush. He comes to visit his mother, and they sit nose to nose where the trees start behind the house.

  A new bull terrier lies on his back and moans with pleasure when the fires are lit in the evening. There is a young black dog, Seamus, part Newfoundland.

  What about that great black dog, Tarka, who used to wake me every night by putting his nose into my hand, or my face, lonely because his people were away? He is too old to be running around at nights now, he stays at home. When there is a party at the Club, he stands on the edge of the room, a s
tiff old dog with a greying muzzle, looking in at young Seamus prancing and jumping among the dancers who say, ‘Look, Seamus is dancing with us–come Seamus, dance with me…’ And the young dog, almost weeping with pride, is steered for a few steps, his front paws carefully held up, while people applaud him. This is the dog who, a few months ago when the Coffee Farmer fell off the dam wall on a black night and could not walk, having cracked his hip, stayed by him, and when the Coffee Farmer was recovered enough to crawl home, adjusted his pace and positioned himself so the farmer could put his weight on his back. It took hours to cover the mile of rough road.

  A PARTY

  A big dinner party: everyone comes. You would not easily get this food in Britain. The vegetables have never heard of insecticides, fertilizers: they live on compost. No one has heard about hams being injected with water. The smoked beef has not had hormones fed into it.

  It is a noisy enjoyable party, with a lot of young people. The little girls of the previous visit have grown up, and are in different parts of the world: there are new little girls, and they are all in love with a handsome young man visiting from Sandhurst. What has happened to the parachutist? Oh, he’s off farming somewhere, doing well, they say.

  Not a suggestion in any of this talk of the peevish complaint of six years ago. They might be different people: they are different people, all involved with development projects.

  Even more than last time they plan to diversify: the crash of kiwi fruit prices was salutary. And they might be growing one of the most sought-after coffees in the world, but there is a coffee mountain…

  These few families are also growing soft fruit, macadamia nuts, pecans, vegetables for the Mutare market, the new small pawpaws. In one kitchen a farmer’s wife began making cheese from the surplus milk: now she cannot produce enough of her cheese to satisfy the hotels and the embassies in the cities. Last time I watched her work on her kitchen table: now she has special rooms kept at the right temperatures, and employs others.

  The talk goes like this:

  I heard Bob is doing well with his eland, how do you think eland would do up here? (Eland grown like cattle, for meat.)

  Zebra…would it be too high for zebra here?

  If camembert is a success here, why not try…?

  I’m putting in five acres of granadillas this year.

  Ostrich feathers are back…

  In Peru they…

  In Mexico…

  In Arizona…

  I’m getting fifty more hives of bees. Killer bees they call them in America. They get hysterical about the slightest thing in America.

  I said: ‘My brother had two hundred hives. When I told him they were called killer bees he only laughed.’

  ‘Anyway, you can breed aggression out of bees. I don’t see the problem.’

  Mangoes…pineapples…strawberries…papayas…Some of these are grown to dry and crystallize: there is a good market for them abroad.

  The new sheep…the new pigs…the new fish…

  The whole world comes on to these verandahs when they are discussing how to find new crops, new ideas.

  And then, which certainly could not have happened last time: ‘I don’t understand why the Africans don’t try this…try that.’ ‘I don’t see why in the Communal Areas they shouldn’t…’ ‘I’m going to have a word with the Minister next time he’s down and suggest…’

  A GOVERNMENT OFFICE

  In fact, on this trip, not much time was spent in the mountains.

  Down the mountain road we go to Mutare where in a certain office we tackle Bureaucracy. Today we are three: the Coffee Farmer, a woman visitor from South Africa, and me. These days white people don’t just wander around villages whenever they feel like it: too much of a reminder of the old days. Besides, one is South African: the fact she does not admire her government is not written on her face. But the Coffee Farmer knows one of the officials well. During the War, the peaceable character sitting behind the desk was a well-known Commander, and he and the Coffee Farmer were enemies. Many a time had the Commander crossed the farm, at night…The two men enjoy the Ho-ho-ho type of male friendship. ‘You never knew how often I was back and forth across your farm.’ ‘Then it was probably you I was taking a pot shot at that night.’ Sometimes they go off to a bar and drink on it. My father used to visit a German smallworker not far from our farm. The two men were in the trenches opposite each other early in the First World War. In Harare I was told of a certain famous guerilla leader who regularly allowed a government security officer through his territory because he was taking medicines to villages; this mission of mercy completed, they resumed hostilities. The two men are now good friends. Clearly there are few closer bonds than having tried to kill each other.

  This young man is thoroughly enjoying his position of being able to say yes or no. You can positively see him thinking that it will do the South African good to be petitioner to a black. The Coffee Farmer does not enjoy having to beg. Not for himself: as a conservation officer he can go where he likes. I am the worst problem: a really suspicious character, it seems. It is no good saying I have a journalist’s pass. The young man says, ‘That does not recommend you. We have given permission to journalists before, with bad results.’ ‘But she is a friend of Zimbabwe,’ says the Coffee Farmer. ‘There are friends and friends,’ says the official. With relish. With the robust enjoyment that goes with certain kinds of political debate. I say that I was a Prohibited Immigrant in this country for thirty years and it is a bit hard to be under suspicion again under this government. ‘Ah,’ ripostes the official, ‘then you are in that area, the political area, and we have to be cautious.’ ‘Surely not as cautious as all that?’ ‘And after all there were many Prohibited Immigrants.’ ‘True, but I have the honour to have been personally Prohibited by Lord Malvern himself.’ ‘And how do you happen to know a thing like that?’ ‘He told me so.’

  We eye each other; seasoned politicos. His face is full of dramatic disbelief, eyebrows raised, chin forward, lips compressed. His hand is lifted, palm forward, as if to say, This far and no further. He slowly lowers his hand, places the palm judiciously on the desk, sits with eyes lowered, thinking. He says ‘Excuse me’ and goes out to make a telephone call from another office.

  He comes back, smiles all round. Now he confides that he is a writer himself, and would like to be a novelist. We discuss the problems of literary creation. In his case, he has to spend too much time on administration. Shaking his head at his fate, office life, he sends us off with underlings into the bush.

  There are two cars, the one from the office, one the Coffee Farmer’s lorry.

  THE RESETTLEMENT AREA

  Off we drove on the road east, then turned off on to a bad road, unsurfaced, then, many miles further on, were on a rutty track, all the time in wild and beautiful country. The soil is pale: this is Class Four soil, and was not bought from white farmers Taking the Gap, for it was unallocated government land. This government, always cautious about resettling people, making sure that there was at least some kind of administrative focal point, water, transport, is now even more so, because something is coming to the fore that was not thought of earlier. Conservation. The precious, precarious, so-easily destroyed soil.

  The Coffee Farmer is now a conservation representative for Manicaland. He works under a Chief, whom he describes as a very sound type, a good chap, you know. It is his task to keep an eye on the sufferings or health of the earth. As we drive rocking along the track he keeps exclaiming, ‘Look at that! See that field! It’s gone to hell since I was here last. See those ruts–that’s erosion.’ Or, ‘Look, that chap there, he knows how to do it, that’s a perfect field. But look at that one on the other side of the road, it’s a mess, there won’t be any soil at all next year if…’ He clutches the wheel, he suffers, he could easily, we soothe, have a heart attack. But it is no good: if he sees a patch of sick soil it is as if he himself were ill. A happy and well-looked-after piece of earth makes him content. ‘Look
at that gully. It wasn’t there last year. What does that chap think he is doing?’ And he stops the car, so the car behind has to stop. Everyone gets out of the car, to look at him standing over the raw scar in the earth. He points at it like the judgement of God: ‘Just look at that.’

  ‘I simply do not understand it,’ says he, pointing first at the eroded field. ‘It’s just as easy to do things well as badly, so why doesn’t this chap do it as well as that chap?’

  He appears to think that this is a simple question, one that can be answered with a sentence beginning, Well, you see, it’s like this…

  On, on, on we drive, many miles from Mutare. We pass Growth Points, all new ones. We pass notices that say ‘Welcome to——School’. We drive past lines of women and children selling mangoes. This is mango country. You may have tasted mangoes but never mangoes like these. Why are they not known world-wide? Transport, that’s why: great distances, bad roads.

  We are giving lifts all the time: the once-bitten-twice-shy cautions of the sophisticated areas are not appropriate here.

  One elderly man, who sat for a few miles holding tight to the side of the jolting lorry, a quiet, unremarkable, smiling man, who walked off into the bush with a smile and a wave when we set him down, has three sons. One is being trained in Czechoslovakia to be an aircraft engineer, for he did well in his examination. One has just taken his O-levels and everyone is waiting for the results. The third failed his exams. The contrast between the futures of the first son and the third was in all our minds; one will live in the modern world, the other as if it scarcely exists.