by Shamim Sarif
“She is sleeping,” said Sam, and Miriam nodded. Omar said nothing, but ate quickly, as always, and then got up, leaving his plate where it was, and walked over to the single armchair where he picked up his newspaper and began to read. As though released from some kind of spell, Miriam and the children began to talk amongst themselves. Small drips of conversation—a story of what had happened at school, of which teacher said what, a question here, and an explanation there. She spoke quietly, because Omar became irritated at too much noise, and when the children’s voices rose, excited or questioning, she would hush them, but with smiling reluctance. She liked this time of chatter with her children, and when they were finished with their meals, they each picked up their plates, and followed her to the sink, where the dishes were deposited. Then came the trek upstairs, leading the children towards the inevitability of their beds. If she was tired, the struggle to bathe them and make them ready for sleep was a long one. But on days like this, the task was enjoyable to her, their singsong voices a break from the quiet, brusque tones of her day in the shop, and their trusting faces a relief to her deepening loneliness.
Later that night, she sat with Omar in the back of the kitchen, where both of them had pulled forward their chairs to whatever warmth remained soaked into the black metal of the stove. The silence outside was deep and thick, and she was grateful to be inside where the walls of her home enclosed living people and sounds and movements, however faint they might be. Omar was writing fitfully, doing the shop accounts, with the oil lamp near his elbow, while Miriam sewed a dress for Alisha. She had received the day before, addressed to her alone, a letter from Rehmat, from Paris, and she was tempted to re-read it, although she knew most of the contents by heart now. It was a short letter, a page of thanks for hospitality shown, and for help given. It was written on cream paper of a kind Miriam had never seen before, as thin and as crisp as a layer of onion skin. Miriam glanced at her husband and recalled the black look that had crossed his face when he had realised that the letter was not addressed to him. She decided to keep it until tomorrow and she continued with the sewing. While he did the accounts he disliked distractions, and so the radio was switched off, and she missed the soothing inflections of the unknown man who read stories over the air every evening. She caught only the outside rim of the lamp that he kept at a low burn to conserve the oil, but her young eyes were strong, and she watched the fabric closely as her fingers wove the needle delicately between the turned edges of the cloth. Omar had developed a habit of clearing his throat every minute or two, and she began to make a game of seeing how many stitches she could make before the next scrape of his throat. He looked up at her once, briefly, and her head also raised in response. She met his eyes for a second, and almost smiled at her husband, but he looked serious and so she bent her head again to the dim cloth that had slipped away from her fingers.
In that profound quiet, the sudden clattering at the front door of the shop startled them both. They both looked up again, and in a second, Omar was on his feet.
“What is that?” he asked her, and she watched him, her eyes wide, as she bit off a length of thread with her teeth.
He took up the lamp and went through to the shop, calling for John as he did so.
“John is sick, remember?” she called after him.
The banging came again—someone clearly wanted to be let in—and Miriam dropped her sewing on the chair, and followed Omar out to the shop. The noise had stopped, and he was busy opening up the padlocks and grills over the front door.
“What are you doing?” she asked, but then the person outside passed under the light, pacing around impatiently on the porch, and she saw that it was a white man, a farmer she recognised from many months ago as a customer at the shop.
When the door finally opened, a series of muttered curses sailed clearly from the porch through to the back counter, where Miriam stood. The farmer strode into the shop with the air of one who owned it.
“My car.” He pointed outside. “It’s messed up. Both the lights are messed up, and I’m driving in the pitch bloody dark and I can’t see a bloody thing.” He stamped his foot like a frustrated child.
“Your car lights stopped working?” repeated Omar, trying to understand.
“Ja. I hit a kaffir, walking in the middle of the . . .” He glanced at Miriam and bit off a swear word, “. . . road, like he owns it, and both my lights got knocked out. I thought I hit him just on the one side, but both my bloody lights are gone.”
Omar went out to the porch and waited for the man to lead the way.
“Where did it happen?” he asked.
“Just here,” he waved out to where the dusty road snaked away into the darkness. “Two hundred yards. Not even. God, I was glad to see your place.”
They both went out to the car and walked around it slowly, surveying the damage together. The farmer touched a dent beside the broken lamp, and then pulled back holding his fingers away from him.
“Bloody kaffir.” He looked around, and then wiped his hand on the back of his trousers. “I don’t know why both lamps are out. But I can’t get home without any light.”
“I have at least one in the shop.” Omar turned and walked back to the edge of the porch.
“Miriam!” he called.
“Yes.”
“Get the car headlamp. It is on the last shelf, by the big paraffin lamps.”
“Yes.”
The shop was almost completely dark, with only the occasional flicker of the Omar’s lamp outside casting a thin gleam onto the wooden shelves, but she knew her way around the stock, and she moved carefully along the rows of stacked up goods, feeling along the shelf above her head, till her fingers had touched on all the lamps, from the tiny candle-like lights to the heavy headlamp at the end. This she pulled down, taking her time, feeling no urgency in spite of the fussing of the men outside. She listened to the rise and fall of their conversation, unable to catch the words, and she felt an unusual sense of control, of calmness settle upon her. Her mind raced, but her body seemed to move just as it should. She heard again and again in her mind the first words of explanation that the Afrikaaner had given. “I hit a bloody kaffir . . .” And now his car was messed up. She turned and walked back down the length of the counter, and out to the porch, where Omar met her and took the lamp. The farmer looked up, hopeful, pleased.
“Ja,” he nodded. “That looks like the right one.”
He took the light, and proceeded to fix it in place.
“Where is he?” The sound of her own voice, barely used for the last several hours, surprised even Miriam herself. The men looked up.
“What?” asked the farmer. She stepped back and looked at Omar. He knew what she was asking, but he said nothing, just stood and held up the lamp.
“The African,” she said quietly. “Where is he?”
Omar frowned at her, displeased. The farmer just stared, cold-eyed. She took a step back, returned to the shop and took down one of the medium sized lamps. She was shaking now, from the cold, she thought, and she pulled her cardigan closer around her body. She went into the kitchen, straight to the stove, and stood there, considering. She flicked open the paraffin tin and poured a little into the lamp, then lit it, watching a thin black trail of smoke curl up from the newly wet wick. The thought of the farmer’s cool, light eyes made her shudder, and she walked up and down, trying to stop the rage of thought in her mind. He reminded her of the policemen who had threatened her not so long ago. The same carelessness, the same disrespect, the same callousness. The old recollections and new events flew around her head, struggling to form some sense. A man is knocked down—a kaffir, a black man, but a man, just the same, and the man who hit him, together with the man whom she was married to, and who was the father of her children, were outside worrying about the dent in the car. The cost of the new lamp. The inconvenience. Are black people really nothing? Did she look in Robert’s or John’s faces everyday and see no one, no person in there, no heart or
soul under the dark skin? What of Amina, whom she liked and admired so much? She was part African. Should she care for her less? She paced again, asking more questions in her mind. Might that African not be hurt, or dead? Might he not have children waiting at home, or a wife, or a mother? Wouldn’t they cry to know he had been hit? From outside, she could still catch the short cadences of the men’s voices and their conversation. She heard again the rough Afrikaaner accent, harsh and complaining, and then her husband’s tone of willing agreement, and without a further thought, she snatched up the lamp, filled a clean jug with water, and she went outside by the kitchen door, walking swiftly through the vegetable garden, and hoping that it really was too cold, as John had laughingly told her the day before, for many snakes to be out. She stopped only once, at the end of the wooden outhouses behind the garden, and she looked up at the house, at the windows behind which her children slept, and she nearly turned back. With a sense of resolution, though, and with, for some reason, a fleeting thought of Amina Harjan, she started purposefully down the track.
What she expected to find several minutes after the man had been hit, she couldn’t have said, even to herself, but she wanted also to be out of the house and away from their voices. The night closed about her, deep and dense like a forest, and she felt for the first time a slight sense of fear. He must be gone already, she thought, the African. But what if he wasn’t, and what if he was angry and attacked her? The sound of insects scratching in the blackness became more evident as she moved farther from the house. When she turned to look back now, the night was so pitch dark she could not even see her own home. She was out, away, alone, doing something unthinkable. Still, her body felt controlled and disciplined, and purposefully, she walked on, clutching her lamp and water.
She heard his breathing first, a human sound in the night. She tried to hold her breath, to remain silent, not understanding for a moment that her burning lamp gave her away, and she cursed her heart for banging so loudly against her ribs. She spun around, trying to locate the ragged breathing in the overwhelming darkness, but he had heard her too, and was holding his breath. They waited, both of them together, still and taut, blinded by the night, until an involuntary rasp of pain betrayed him.
She turned in the direction of the sound, and walked forward, holding the lamp far out in front of her.
“Hello?” she called, and as she did so, she saw a lean, dark leg slide across the ground and away, out of the circle of her light, and into the darkness beyond. She followed it and saw it again, sliding, sticky with blood.
“Wait,” she said and swung the lamp forward, and the man was caught in the pool of light, his breathing hard, his eyes turned away.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” she said, and he turned his head, almost shaved of hair and shiny with sweat, and he looked up at her with flashing white eyes that were fearful and full of hatred. The force of that hate made her stop short, cut her boldness off dead as though it were a honed razor, and she paused, the jar of water poised in her hand. Miriam swallowed and held out the jug at arm’s length, but the man made no attempt to touch it.
“It’s water,” she said, and moved towards him. Something brushed behind her and she started, making him jump also, but she realised it was just a bat or some kind of flying insect.
“A bat, ” she said out loud. She put the water down on the ground.
“You’re hurt, you must let me help you. Otherwise you will not get home.”
No answer from the darkness, just the occasional flash of the whites of his eyes, and the feeling of his body there, very near to hers in that vast, empty night. She needed a cloth to bind his leg, a blanket to keep him warm. She looked back towards where she thought the shop was. Should she bring him back to the outhouses and let him stay there? What if Omar found him? What if he stole things?
“I don’t need your help,” his voice rasped at her, much nearer than she had thought.
“I can bring you a blanket and a bandage for your leg.”
No reply. An effort was being made, there were heavy breaths and a small groan of pain. He was trying to stand, and she saw his head bob into the light. She put down the lamp and he weaved uncertainly on his feet. Without thinking, she moved forward and grasped his arm, uncovered even in that cold, and he leaned on her for one second, his tall body against her slim frame, before he stood upright again. She immediately let go of him, blushing in the dark, amazed at her audacity. If her family ever knew she had touched a black man in such a way, they would be scandalised. No matter what the circumstances.
“Let me get you some . . .”
“I don’t need your help,” he said, his voice stronger now and hard. He looked at her with contempt, then he turned and limped away from her.
She felt like crying, overwhelmed by the dark night, the hatred, the blood. Did he see her as white? As someone as bad as the farmer? She began to walk back to the shop and saw the water jug before her, untouched. Stopping to pick it up, she half-ran the short distance back, till she came within sight of the stoep. The farmer’s car was gone, and the house seemed completely dark. She walked silently around to the front, and saw Omar’s light in the shop, his shadow moving back and forth among the sacks of goods. She hurried back to the kitchen door, stopped at the step and plunged her hands into the water, rubbing furiously to remove the blood that she could smell on her fingers. Then she threw out the water and reached up for the door handle. It was locked. She tried again, and this time saw her husband’s lamp swing into the far end of the kitchen from the shop and come down to the back door where she stood, tense and still. Omar held the lamp up to the window and looked out at her, then turned the key in the lock and stood back to let her enter.
She surprised herself when she walked in as normal, as though she were returning from the garden in broad daylight. She went to the table, put down the lamp, straightened her cardigan, and pulled up a sleeve that she now noticed had blood on it.
“Where have you been?” he said quietly.
“In the laundry room,” she said. “I wanted to get a clean blanket.” Her tone was calm and steady, but the lie did not ring true and she knew it. For one thing, she wasn’t holding any blanket. He came to where she stood, and he leaned in to her. She put up her hands, thinking he was going to strike her, but he only sniffed at her as a dog sniffs an unfamiliar object. She knew immediately what he would smell, that he would sense the faint, sweet odour of the injured man’s sweat and blood on her clothing, and this time when he stepped forward again he hit her. The strike was hard and she staggered back, bruising her hip against the table, and she kept her hands up for the next blow. It hit her across the face despite her shielding, splitting her lip and causing a thin stream of blood to course down her chin and neck. For the first time since she had re-entered the house, she became aware that the baby was crying in the room above.
He hit her four times and it was a shock to her that he had come to this at last. She stood against the counter, arms up over her face, and when he stopped she could not look at him. Neither could he look at her. Instead he put down the oil lamp and went upstairs without another word.
She had always dreaded this moment; not out of physical fear, though certainly she had been scared. But because she knew it would be a terrible thing to have to understand about your husband, that he would really hit you, and she had always thought when she was younger that hitting was the one thing that she would never tolerate. But now it had happened and she knew that she would go upstairs when he had calmed down. What else was there to do with the children in their beds, and no other place to go to? She knew him better than he knew himself, knew he would hate what he had just done. She could visualise him in the bathroom upstairs, washing his hands as though that would remove the taint of the violence; combing back his hair without meeting his own eyes in the mirror. She tasted the blood filling her mouth, and it tasted as she imagined metal would taste, cool and sharp. Blood like his, like the injured African’s, there on the r
oad.
Miriam straightened up, waited until her dizziness had passed, and then she went to the pump and put her head beneath it, until the drying blood had washed away. She was freezing cold and her limbs were stiff and she was shaking. With legs like lead, she walked up the stairs to the baby’s room, but when she opened the door and looked, she realised that the crying had stopped. She walked tiredly over to the cot and watched the child sleeping now, her chubby pink fists raised as if in fight above her head. Miriam felt like weeping, but she did not. She wiped her hand absently upon her skirt, then reached down with the tips of her fingers and stroked the soft, dark down on the baby’s head. “Sleep,” she said to the child, and she watched her for a while and then went to face Omar.
Chapter Sixteen
Robert pulled and heaved at the wooden door to the cellar, as Miriam stood nearby, watching the boy struggling.
“Didn’t you just go down there last week?” she asked him.
“Yes, Madam. It was okay then,” he confirmed. “Let me keep trying Madam. It is just stuck from the rain.”
Miriam nodded, and went back out to the shop, where Christina, the maid at the Weston farm, was still looking leisurely through the merchandise on offer. Although they sold mostly basic items, Christina eagerly looked forward to her weekly visits here and always noticed anything new.
“Can I help you find anything?” Miriam asked. She glanced back and watched as Robert pulled with all his weight at the cellar door. The wood creaked loudly, and then slowly began to move upwards. Miriam smiled.
