African Stories Page 4

  So it comes to this: we are grown proud and honest out of the knowledge of her honesty and pride and, measuring ourselves against her, we allow ourselves to feel only the small, persistent, but gently humorous anger she must have felt. Only anger, that is permissible, she would allow that. But against what? Against what?

  The Pig

  THE farmer paid his labourers on a Saturday evening, when the sun went down. By the time he had finished it was always quite dark, and from the kitchen door where the lantern hung, bars of yellow light lay down the steps, across the path, and lit up the trees and the dark faces under them.

  This Saturday, instead of dispersing as usual when they took their money, they retired a little way into the dark under the foliage, talking among themselves to pass the time. When the last one had been paid, the farmer said: “Call the women and the children. Everybody in the compound must be here.” The boss-boy, who had been standing beside the table calling out names, stood forward and repeated the order. But in an indifferent voice, as a matter of form, for all this had happened before, every year for years past. Already there was a subdued moving at the back of the crowd as the women came in from under the trees where they had been waiting; and the light caught a bunched skirt, a copper armlet, or a bright headcloth.

  Now all the dimly-lit faces showed hope that soon this ritual would be over, and they could get back to their huts and their fires. They crowded closer without being ordered.

  The farmer began to speak, thinking as he did so of his lands that lay all about him, invisible in the darkness, but sending on the wind a faint rushing noise like the sea; and although he had done this before so often, and was doing it now half-cynically, knowing it was a waste of time, the memory of how good those fields of strong young plants looked when the sun shone on them put urgency and even anger into his voice.

  The trouble was that every year black hands stripped the cobs from the stems in the night, sacks of cobs; and he could never catch the thieves. Next morning he would see the prints of bare feet in the dust between the rows. He had tried everything, had warned, threatened, docked rations, even fined the whole compound collectively—it made no difference. The lands lying next to the compound would be cheated of their yield, and when the harvesters brought in their loads, everyone knew there would be less than what had been expected.

  And if everyone knew it, why put on this display for the tenth time? That was the question the farmer saw on the faces in front of him; polite faces turning this way and that over impatient bodies and shifting feet. They were thinking only of the huts and the warm meal waiting for them. The philosophic politeness, almost condescension, with which he was being treated infuriated the farmer; and he stopped in the middle of a sentence, banging on the table with his fist, so that the faces centred on him and the feet stilled.

  “Jonas,” said the farmer. Out on to the lit space stepped a tall elderly man with a mild face. But now he looked sombre. The farmer saw that look and braced himself for a fight. This man had been on the farm for several years. An old scoundrel, the farmer called him, but affectionately: he was fond of him, for they had been together for so long. Jonas did odd jobs for half the year; he drew water for the garden, cured hides, cut grass. But when the growing season came he was an important man.

  “Come here, Jonas,” the farmer said again; and picked up the .33 rifle that had been leaning against his chair until now. During the rainy season, Jonas slept out his days in his hut, and spent his nights till the cold dawns came guarding the fields from the buck and the pigs that attacked the young plants. They could lay waste whole acres in one night, a herd of pigs. He took the rifle, greeting it, feeling its familiar weight on his arm. But he looked reluctant nevertheless.

  “This year, Jonas, you will shoot everything you see—understand?”

  “Yes, baas.”

  “Everything, buck, baboons, pig. And everything you hear. You will not stop to look. If you hear a noise, you will shoot.”

  There was a movement among the listening people, and soft protesting noises.

  “And if it turns out to be a human pig, then so much the worse. My lands are no place for pigs of any kind.”

  Jonas said nothing, but he turned towards the others, holding the rifle uncomfortably on his arm, appealing that they should not judge him.

  “You can go,” said the farmer. After a moment the space in front of him was empty, and he could hear the sound of bare feet feeling their way along dark paths, the sound of loudening angry talk. Jonas remained beside him.

  “Well, Jonas?”

  “I do not want to shoot this year.”

  The farmer waited for an explanation. He was not disturbed at the order he had given. In all the years he had worked this farm no one had been shot, although every season the thieves moved at night along the mealie rows, and every night Jonas was out with a gun. For he would shout, or fire the gun into the air, to frighten intruders. It was only when dawn came that he fired at something he could see. All this was a bluff. The threat might scare off a few of the more timid; but both sides knew, as usual, that it was a bluff. The cobs would disappear; nothing could prevent it.

  “And why not?” asked the farmer at last.

  “It’s my wife. I wanted to see you about it before,” said Jonas, in dialect.

  “Oh, your wife!” The farmer had remembered. Jonas was old-fashioned. He had two wives, an old one who had borne him several children, and a young one who gave him a good deal of trouble. Last year, when this wife was new, he had not wanted to take on this job which meant being out all night.

  “And what is the matter with the day-time?” asked the farmer with waggish good-humour, exactly as he had the year before. He got up, and prepared to go inside.

  Jonas did not reply. He did not like being appointed official guardian against theft by his own people, but even that did not matter so much, for it never once occurred to him to take the order literally. This was only the last straw. He was getting on in years now, and he wanted to spend his nights in peace in his own hut, instead of roaming the bush. He had disliked it very much last year, but now it was even worse. A younger man visited his pretty young wife when he was away.

  Once he had snatched up a stick, in despair, to beat her with; then he had thrown it down. He was old, and the other man was young, and beating her could not cure his heartache. Once he had come up to his master to talk over the situation, as man to man; but the farmer had refused to do anything. And, indeed, what could he do? Now, repeating what he had said then, the farmer spoke from the kitchen steps, holding the lamp high in one hand above his shoulder as he turned to go in, so that it sent beams of light swinging across the bush: “I don’t want to hear anything about your wife, Jonas. You should look after her yourself. And if you are not too old to take a young wife, then you aren’t too old to shoot. You will take the gun as usual this year. Good night.” And he went inside, leaving the garden black and pathless. Jonas stood quite still, waiting for his eyes to accustom themselves to the dark; then he started off down the path, finding his way by the feel of the loose stones under his feet.

  He had not yet eaten, but when he came to within sight of the compound, he felt he could not go farther. He halted, looking at the little huts silhouetted black against cooking fires that sent up great drifting clouds of illuminated smoke. There was his hut, he could see it, a small conical shape. There his wives were, waiting with his food prepared and ready.

  But he did not want to eat. He felt he could not bear to go in and face his old wife, who mocked him with her tongue, and his young wife who answered him submissively but mocked him with her actions. He was sick and tormented, cut off from his friends who were preparing for an evening by the fires, because he could see the knowledge of his betrayal in their eyes. The cold pain of jealousy that had been gnawing at him for so long, felt now like an old wound, aching as an old wound aches before the rains set in.

  He did not want to go into the fields, either to perch
until he was stiff in one of the little cabins on high stilts that were built at the corners of each land as shooting platforms, or to walk in the dark through the hostile bush. But that night, without going for his food, he set off as usual on his long vigil.

  The next night, however, he did not go; nor the next, nor the nights following. He lay all day dozing in the sun on his blanket, turning himself over and over in the sun, as if its rays could cauterize the ache from his heart. When evening came, he ate his meal early before going off with the gun. And then he stood with his back to a tree, within sight of the compound; indeed, within a stone’s throw of his own hut, for hours, watching silently. He felt numb and heavy. He was there without purpose. It was as if his legs had refused an order to march away from the place. All that week the lands lay unguarded, and if the wild animals were raiding the young plants, he did not care. He seemed to exist only in order to stand at night watching his hut. He did not allow himself to think of what was happening inside. He merely watched; until the fires burned down, and the bush grew cold and he was so stiff that when he went home, at sunrise, he had the appearance of one exhausted after a night’s walking.

  The following Saturday there was a beer drink. He could have got leave to attend it, had he wanted; but at sundown he took himself off as usual and saw that his wife was pleased when he left.

  As he leaned his back to the tree trunk that gave him its support each night, and held the rifle lengthwise to his chest, he fixed his eyes steadily on the dark shape that was his hut, and remembered that look on his young wife’s face. He allowed himself to think steadily of it, and of many similar things. He remembered the young man, as he had seen him only a few days before, bending over the girl as she knelt to grind meal, laughing with her; then the way they both looked up, startled, at his approach, their faces growing blank.

  He could feel his muscles tautening against the rifle as he pictured that scene, so that he set it down on the ground, for relief, letting his arms fall. But in spite of the pain, he continued to think, for tonight things were changed in him, and he no longer felt numb and purposeless. He stood erect and vigilant, letting the long cold barrel slide between his fingers, the hardness of the tree at his back like a second spine. And as he thought of the young man another picture crept into his mind again and again, that of a young water-buck he had shot last year, lying soft at his feet, its tongue slipping out into the dust as he picked it up, so newly dead that he imagined he felt the blood still pulsing under the warm skin. And from the small wet place under its neck a few sticky drops rolled over glistening fur. Suddenly, as he stood there thinking of the blood, and the limp dead body of the buck, and the young man laughing with his wife, his mind grew clear and cool and the oppression on him lifted.

  He sighed deeply, and picked up the rifle again, holding it close, like a friend, against him, while he gazed in through the trees at the compound.

  It was early, and the flush from sunset had not yet quite gone from the sky, although where he stood among the undergrowth it was night. In the clear spaces between the huts groups of figures took shape, talking and laughing and getting ready for the dance. Small cooking fires were being lit; and a big central fire blazed, sending up showers of sparks into the clouds of smoke. The tomtoms were beating softly; soon the dance would begin. Visitors were coming in through the bush from other farm compounds miles away: it would be a long wait.

  Three times he heard soft steps along the path close to him before he drew back and turned his head to watch the young man pass, as he had passed every night that week, with a jaunty eager tread and eyes directed towards Jonas’s hut. Jonas stood as quiet as a tree struck by lightning, holding his breath, although he could not be seen, because the thick shadows from the trees were black around him. He watched the young man thread his way through the huts into the circle of firelight, and pass cautiously to one side of the groups of waiting people, like someone uncertain of his welcome, before going in through the door of his own hut.

  Hours passed, and he watched the leaping dancing people, and listened to the drums as the stars swung over his head and the night birds talked in the bush around him. He thought steadily now, as he had not previously allowed himself to think, of what was happening inside the small dark hut that gradually became invisible as the fires died and the dancers went to their blankets. When the moon was small and high and cold behind his back, and the trees threw sharp black shadows on the path, and he could smell morning on the wind, he saw the young man coming towards him again. Now Jonas shifted his feet a little, to ease the stiffness out of them, and moved the rifle along his arm, feeling for the curve of the trigger on his finger.

  As the young man lurched past, for he was tired, and moved carelessly, Jonas slipped out into the smooth dusty path a few paces behind, shrinking back as the released branches swung wet into his face and scattered large drops of dew on to his legs. It was cold; his breath misted into a thin pearly steam dissolving into the moonlight.

  He was so close to the man in front that he could have touched him with the raised rifle; had he turned there would have been no concealment; but Jonas walked confidently, though carefully, and thought all the time of how he had shot down from ten paces away that swift young buck as it started with a crash out of a bush into a cold moony field.

  When they reached the edge of the land where acres of mealies sloped away, dimly green under a dome of stars, Jonas began to walk like a cat. He wanted now to be sure; and he was only fifty yards from the shooting platform in the corner of the field, that looked in this light like a crazy fowl-house on stilts. The young man was staggering with tiredness and drink, making a crashing noise at each step as he snapped the sap-full mealies under heavy feet.

  But the buck had shot like a spear from the bush, had caught the lead in its chest as it leaped, had fallen as a spear curves to earth; it had not blundered and lurched and swayed. Jonas began to feel a disgust for this man, and the admiration and fascination he felt for his young rival vanished. The tall slim youth who had laughed down at his wife had nothing to do with the ungainly figure crashing along before him, making so much noise that there could be no game left unstartled for miles.

  When they reached the shooting platform, Jonas stopped dead, and let the youth move on. He lifted the rifle to his cheek and saw the long barrel slant against the stars, which sent a glint of light back down the steel. He waited, quite still, watching the man’s back sway above the mealies. Then, at the right moment, he squeezed his finger close, holding the rifle ready to fire again.

  As the sound of the shot reverberated, the round dark head jerked oddly, blotting out fields of stars; the body seemed to crouch, and one hand went out as if he were going to lean sideways to the ground. Then he disappeared into the mealies with a startled thick cry. Jonas lowered the rifle and listened. There was threshing noise, a horrible grunting, and half-words muttered, like someone talking in sleep.

  Jonas picked his way along the rows, feeling the sharp leaf edges scything his legs, until he stood above the body that now jerked softly among the stems. He waited until it stilled, then bent to look, parting the chilled, moon-green leaves so that he could see clearly.

  It was no clean small hole: raw flesh gaped, blood poured black to the earth, the limbs were huddled together shapeless and without beauty, the face was pressed into the soil.

  “A pig,” said Jonas aloud to the listening moon, as he kicked the side gently with his foot, “nothing but a pig.”

  He wanted to hear how it would sound when he said it again, telling how he had shot blind into the grunting, invisible herd.

  Traitors

  WE HAD discovered the Thompsons’ old house long before their first visit.

  At the back of our house the ground sloped up to where the bush began, an acre of trailing pumpkin vines, ash-heaps where pawpaw trees sprouted, and lines draped with washing where the wind slapped and jiggled. The bush was dense and frightening, and the grass there higher than a tall
man. There were not even paths.

  When we had tired of our familiar acre we explored the rest of the farm: but this particular stretch of bush was avoided. Sometimes we stood at its edge, and peered in at the tangled granite outcrops and great antheaps curtained with Christmas fern. Sometimes we pushed our way in a few feet, till the grass closed behind us, leaving overhead a small space of blue. Then we lost our heads and ran back again.

  Later, when we were given our first rifle and a new sense of bravery, we realised we had to challenge that bush. For several days we hesitated, listening to the guinea fowl calling only a hundred yards away, and making excuses for cowardice. Then, one morning, at sunrise, when the trees were pink and gold, and the grass-stems were running bright drops of dew, we looked at each other, smiling weakly, and slipped into the bushes with our hearts beating.

  At once we were alone, closed in by grass, and we had to reach out for the other’s dress and cling together. Slowly, heads down, eyes half closed against the sharp grass-seeds, two small girls pushed their way past antheap and outcrop, past thorn and gully and thick clumps of cactus where any wild animal might lurk.

  Suddenly, after only five minutes of terror, we emerged in a space where the red earth was scored with cattle tracks. The guinea fowl were clinking ahead of us in the grass, and we caught a glimpse of a shapely dark bird speeding along a path. We followed, shouting with joy because the forbidding patch of bush was as easily conquered and made our own as the rest of the farm.

  We were stopped again where the ground dropped suddenly to the vlei, a twenty-foot shelf of flattened grass where the cattle went to water. Sitting, we lifted our dresses and coasted down-hill on the slippery swathes, landing with torn knickers and scratched knees in a donga of red dust scattered with dried cow-pats and bits of glistening quartz. The guinea fowl stood in a file and watched us, their heads tilted with apprehension; but my sister said, with bravado: “I am going to shoot a buck!”