by Andre Brink
Mrs Lawrence was attending to a group of Black women in frilled shawls, passing the material from hand to hand to feel and loudly comment on before they removed their tall turbans and unfolded them to produce small, crumpled bundles of notes; after the transaction the change would be restored to the turban and the latter tied round the head again, before the next purchase was embarked on in the same tedious way.
I greeted her and we chatted for a while. She took the eggs from me – in some inscrutable way it would be entered into the complicated bartering transactions between her and Ma – and handed me the mail: a few accounts, an announcement from Reader’s Digest (Your Sweepstake Numbers Inside!!!), a farming magazine, an airmail letter from Pretoria, presumably from Theo’s wife.
“And how are you keeping?” I asked mechanically.
“Oh, I’m not complaining.” Mrs Lawrence was a tiny, mousey woman with the pointed nose of a shrew and the inquisitive eyes of a meerkat; I’d never been able to understand how she could have produced a pretty, lusty girl like Cathy. “I suppose you heard we’re going to sell up?”
“Yes, Ma told me. The drought’s really bad.”
“It’s not just the drought. We’re getting on, you know, and we thought we’d like to move closer to the children. Both Cathy and Doug are living in the Cape now.”
“I should never have allowed Cathy to get away from me,” I joked, winking. Until two years before I’d often seen her during holidays, playing tennis on their farm or having sundowners; pleasant husband she had, outdoor-type surveyor; and once, on a New Year’s Eve, when we’d all had rather too much to drink, she and I disappeared among the shrubs to consummate, for auld lang syne, the remembered passion of our childhood.
“Doug doesn’t want to take over the farm?” I asked.
A hopeless question, I knew. As Ma had put it once: “Poor Doug. The Lord gave him only one talent and that was to play rugby. Now he’s gone and hurt his back, so all he’s got left to do is drink.” At one stage he’d almost reached the Springbok team. Now his old man regularly had to bail him out of jail.
“It’s just not pleasant any more, Martin,” confided Mrs Lawrence. “I used to enjoy working in the store, you know. We always got along very well with the Kaffirs. I mean, they were noisy and all that, but they knew their place. Nowadays they’re so cheeky, one doesn’t know what to do any more. I’ve got to keep a gun in the shop, just in case. One never knows.” She pulled open a drawer to show me the pistol. “Oh, it’s a real problem. They’re getting too white, is what I say.”
“Well, time to go, Mrs Lawrence. Goodbye, then. Give Cathy my love when you write again.” Adding, for the sake of propriety: “And to Doug as well.”
I drove back with my eyes narrowed in concentration as the little van bucked and danced on the corrugated road, kicking up a cloud of dust behind it. Soon I was back at the top gate. The piccanins came running on from the distance, but stopped when they recognised me, obviously reluctant because I hadn’t given them money the first time. I hooted loudly. They seemed to confer among themselves until I opened the door. That got them moving all right.
Mrs Lawrence had been right, I thought as I drove through. They were becoming cheeky, even at their age. This time I chucked a handful of cents at them, grinning to see them fighting and rolling in the dust for the money. It wasn’t to confuse or spoil them that I’d done it, but to reward them for the little service they’d performed without begging like the previous time.
Straining my eyes, I could see the deep red gashes of erosion ditches running down the side of the road. If this drought lasted for much longer, Ma would have no choice but to pack up and leave. Not only Ma, but everybody else in the district. It seemed as if the drought was bent on getting rid of us. Beyond buying and selling, beyond economics and politics, beyond White and Black, lay the land itself, and in times like these one discovered it was only by its leave and by its grace that we were tolerated there.
It was unnerving to realise how easily we could be dispensed with. When I’d left Aunt Rienie’s home after completing my studies in Stellenbosch it had taken me an afternoon to clean the room and pack up and dispose of the accumulated waste. Afterwards, a stranger might have walked in without an inkling of the man who’d lived there before him, so completely had I eradicated all signs of my existence. And in London it had happened again, when Elise and I had left our basement flat in Islington to come back home. Two years of our lives had gone into that miserable little place: yet, after a single day’s packing and cleaning there hadn’t been anything left of us at all. How much worse it would be, one day, when the earth itself began to clear us away. One never knew when it would happen. The worst of all was that it might have been predestined in the very core of the earth since millions of years before one’s own birth. Like a shooting star that became visible aeons after it had already burnt out.
There had been the disaster at the mine near Carletonville, two years before: a rock-fall caused by the pressure of earth on a geological fault, a displacement of less than one micron, creating shock waves which caused the whole mine to collapse. An event prepared a million years ago: a disaster predestined without our slightest knowledge (Calvin would have relished the thought). By the time we became aware of it, the earth was shaking and the tunnels and shafts were caving in. More than two hundred men buried, four of them Whites. I shall never forget the scene. The crowd gathered in the cloud of red dust, the four White women praying on their knees, the hundreds of Blacks to one side – first in deadly silence, then erupting in ululations of grief, lasting all night. The floodlights, the bulldozers and cranes, the Women’s Auxiliary serving coffee. Even the Salvation Army turned up for prayer meetings, separate services for Blacks and Whites. The brave little choir singing in the wind, the bulging red cheeks of the old men blowing their trumpets. And the journalists. Pages and pages of interviews with the four White women. In the end the operation had to be called off, after some thirty bodies had been found, all of them Black. The others remained under tons of rock and rubble. It was useless to continue the search, and extremely dangerous as well. I had to write off the mine. A loss of several hundred thousand.
Driving back to the farm, I thought: When will it happen again, to us? When will the Continent decide to throw us off, like an old dog shaking himself to rid him of fleas?
I was getting morbid. It was time Ma made up her mind. The farm was no good to us any more.
How long would it take to clear out everything that belonged to us? Perhaps a week, at the most. Only the graves would stay, of course.
In the backyard the old diviner was preparing to go and Philemon was just putting his small black trunk on the back of their van when I stopped. Unfortunately I was still in time to shake the limp, damp paw of Mr Scholtz.
“Found any water?” I asked perfunctorily.
“Yes,” he said in his mournful way, as if he were blaming me for it. “Yes. Just as I thought. Running down from the ridge up there and passing right under the house.” For a brief moment there was a flickering of malevolent glee in his lifeless eyes: “But it’s very deep,” he said. “And solid rock. Almost impossible to reach.”
8
LUNCH STARTED PEACEFULLY enough, even with a hint of good humour. But there was a more ominous undercurrent. There we were, halfway through Saturday, and Ma hadn’t budged yet. I would have to start turning on the pressure before long. There was too much involved not to feel tense. But I had to wait for the right moment, or all would be lost.
I was annoyed to see Louis sitting down with unwashed oil-covered hands, but feeling Ma’s eyes on me in silent warning I decided not to make a remark, although I felt sure he’d done it deliberately. My silence probably unnerved him; also, he may have felt some guilt about the morning’s scene, or otherwise his involvement with machinery had made him more approachable: whatever it was, he was much more relaxed at table than he’d been for a long time.
“Do you think you’ll get that engi
ne going again, Louis?” asked Ma, handing him his loaded plate.
“Don’t know, Gran. I’ll have to strip the whole thing. But I think it’ll be all right. Just needs a proper cleaning.”
“Wouldn’t you like one of the labourers to help you?”
“Yes, it’ll be useful.”
“I’ll ask Mandisi,” said Ma. “It’s Saturday and he’s got nothing to do before milking time.”
“But isn’t it his afternoon off?”
“Yes, but he’ll be only too glad to earn something extra.” She called Kristina to give her the message for Mandisi.
“I noticed some of the boys up there running about without clothes,” I said after Kristina had left.
“I just can’t keep up with them,” Ma sighed. “I keep dishing out old clothes. Some of the men just sell it for liquor. What can one do? I’m doing my best to supply them with mealie meal and things, but every month new squatters arrive, God alone knows where they come from. The farms are getting blacker all the time.”
That was the opening I’d been waiting for.
“Why do you put up with it?” I asked. “It’s going from bad to worse. Be honest, Ma: isn’t it better to clear out while you can still do it with some dignity?”
“How is running away going to solve the problem?” she asked.
“It’s not running away. It’s using your common sense.”
“You’re just being stroppy today, Martin.”
“It’s you who refuse to understand reason.”
“Oh I understand very well, sonny. It’s just that I won’t sell out so easily.”
“What’s this about selling?” asked Louis.
“Your father wants to sell the farm under my feet,” said Ma.
“First time I hear of it,” he said in obvious surprise.
“If you’d been home more often you’d have known about it,” I said coolly, annoyed at his interruption. “But one never sees you around any more.”
“And when I’m seen you tell me I mustn’t be heard.”
I refused to be baited by him again. Turning back to Ma, I asked her: “Can you give me one sound reason for staying on here?”
“I told you before. Dad lies buried on this farm.”
“Listen, Ma.” I knew I had to phrase it very carefully; at the same time I couldn’t be too gentle: “Dad is dead. We are the ones who must keep on living. What’s a grave if you really think about it? Just a hole and a bundle of bones.”
For a while it was very quiet. From the kitchen came the clattering sounds of washing up.
“One can’t grind all bones to make bone-meal,” said Ma. After a while she looked up: “What will become of us if we start deserting our bones? It’s just another way of saying we don’t need the land any more. That’s the sort of pride the Lord brings before a fall.”
“Leave the Lord out of it!”
“Now don’t kick up another row, sonny.” Her voice was soothing, but I could hear the deeper passion stirring in it. “What will become of this place if we leave it?”
“We’re talking past each other, Ma. It’s not our concern what happens to the farm afterwards. What matters is that you can’t stay on here.”
“Oh no. What matters is that you want money for it.”
“Don’t you think it’s high time? How much money has it cost me over the years to keep you and Dad going? And what has become of it all? As far as I’m concerned the farm is nothing but a gaping hole into which I’ve been pouring money all the time.”
She was very pale. “Are you sure that’s all it’s been to you?”
“What’s the use of staying on if the farm is going downhill all the time?”
“I’m not asking any help from you. All I ask is to be left alone. I’m just fine right here.”
The moment had come, I decided, to confront her with the full finality of the fact.
“I’ve tried to be as co-operative as possible,” I said. “But you won’t listen to me. All right, then I won’t go on pleading and begging. I’ll just tell you straight: the documents have already been signed.”
Taking her time she put her knife and fork back on her empty plate and wiped her mouth with the large damask napkin. “Then you’ll just have to cancel it again, sonny. I’m staying here. And without my written consent you can’t do anything.”
It was time to become aggressive. Getting up I kicked out the chair behind me, sending it toppling backwards. “That’s all it amounts to!” I shouted at her. “Plain, ordinary selfishness, and nothing else. Whatever I’ve done to help you survive on the farm means sweet blow-all to you. You can’t care less if I want to be freed of this burden. Because deep down I don’t mean anything to you. I know Dad would have understood, but you don’t.”
“There’s still coffee to come,” she said quietly behind me as I got to the door.
But I refused to submit to kindness. It would just take us back to where we’d started, and now it was time to bring the whole thing to a head. I slammed the door behind me. In the kitchen I was conscious of old Kristina’s startled glance from the wash-up basin, but without paying attention to her I stalked out to the yard. Under the spreading wild-fig with the decayed remains of the treehouse I stood for some time in the clear, biting cold.
After a while I went round the house to the front door and took the bunch of keys from the hook in the passage. Allowing both the front door and its covering frame of wire-mesh to slam behind me, I went off in the direction of the dairy and the stables and Dad’s study. His sanctuary. The door was stuck, as if it hadn’t been opened for months, and I had to force it with my shoulder.
For a moment I waited on the doorstep. There was a musty smell inside and everything was covered in dust. It was obvious that the room had not been used for a long time. I opened the curtains to let in the wintry, watery sun. The room had a second-hand look about it, depressing and down-at-heel, irrelevant. On the wall was a calendar of two years before. Here and there the paint had peeled off. The curtains, the chair cushions, the mohair spread on the divan (woven by Elise many years before) looked faded.
The rickety shelves were filled with books, interspersed with some of Elise’s pots; one still had a few dried grasses stuck into it. A small collection of semi-precious stones from South West. The shelves running from the door to the far wall were sturdier: those were the ones Elise and Dad had built together. Everything in the room appeared disconnected, an assortment of totally unrelated objects, tokens of an existence which had no relation to mine at all. Like a bunch of old keys which no longer fitted any lock.
When Pa had still been a teacher our village carpenter had fitted his study shelves: Oom Hennie with his baggy shorts and checkered cap, his wiry grey moustache and two bright beady eyes; aided by his old Black helper, Freddie, shrivelled and hoary with age. I’d watched them at work for days on end, relishing the smell of sawdust and shavings, the hissing sound of the plane, the noise of the drill entering the wall. Oom Hennie was a miserable little runt of a man, more or less despised by everybody for his cringing ways. But when he was working with wood, his whole aspect changed. He would handle every plank as if he knew it intimately, as if he actually respected it. I’d never seen a dovetail fit as tightly as his: one couldn’t get a thumbnail into it. Once he’d started measuring or sawing or shaving or hammering he appeared to become taller than before, his back straightened out, and his eyes were gleaming as if they could see invisible things in the wood. His clumsy hands with dirty fingernails moved gently across the grain as if he were caressing it. And the wood seemed to understand him, yielding in advance to the magic touch of his tools.
He and old Freddie formed a perfect team. Their four hands never got in each other’s way; each seemed to anticipate what the other would be doing, adapting to every move effortlessly. Oom Hennie was a very ordinary old Boer. When he’d reluctantly pushed aside his tools for a few minutes to share a cup of tea with Ma and Dad, he would complain endlessly about the unreliabili
ty of Blacks. But when he and Freddie were working, they were like twin brothers.
On the last day but one of their job in our house Freddie fell off the stepladder and seriously injured his back. Dad and Ma helped Oom Hennie carry him to the truck to take him to the doctor. He had to stay in bed for a month. And every single day Oom Hennie drove to the location to visit him with some food and to chat for a while. In our presence he would good-naturedly fulminate against “the stupid bloody Kaffir”, but it was plain for all to see how helpless he was without his assistant. And when they returned at last to finish the shelves, it was pure joy to watch them again, as if it were a new lease of life to both of them.
