African Quilt : 24 Modern African Stories (9781101617441) (17 page)

It was a difficult life but Dadi-Ma never complained, even though she hated city life and constantly longed for Stanger and for Ratnadevi. The years passed and memories of those happy days began to dim. Eventually she stopped thinking about them. For fifteen years she lived with Sonny and his wife, taking care of them, and suffering constant abuse at the hands of Neela who grew resentful of her role in the house. Then one day, five years ago, Neela gave birth to Chotoo and it was as though Dadi-Ma had finally found fulfilment.

* * *

Now, ever since the landlord had given them notice, her thoughts returned again to that little house at the end of the road with the swing in the front yard. She could see the trees and hear the plank veranda and fence creaking in the wind.

Dadi-Ma remained on the step, dreaming. There was a stench of urine and human excrement in the air which came from a blocked sewer. They were accustomed to the stench which mingled with the rancid smell of old ghee and curry.

In a way Dadi-Ma was relieved that they were leaving. It was too difficult to raise a boy in this environment. He needed to run free, to breathe air unpolluted by smoke and odours of decay. Dadi-Ma's thoughts drifted back to the long low line of hills in the north, to mango and litchi trees laden with fruit. She remembered how she and Ratnadevi had sat out on the veranda, identifying the gaily coloured birds as they swooped down into the trees.

She and Ratnadevi had spent so much of their time in the backyard, doing the washing, kneading and scrubbing the heavy linen against the fluted surface of the washboard. In their spare time they sat beneath the tree, weaving baskets. Sometimes they chatted about their life in India, or life on the plantation; other times they worked in easy companionable silence.

Chotoo returned to his grandmother's side, wanting to know more about this place called Stanger. She was smiling to herself now as she thought of how she and Ratnadevi would once again sit out in the yard. She remembered the long washing line and the sputtering sizzle as Ratnadevi deftly spat against the iron. She remembered the smell of lye and freshly ironed laundry.

They could weave baskets again. As if following her thoughts her fingers, now stiff with age and arthritis, fell awkwardly into the familiar movements of weaving. The boy, seeing this, pressed closer to her side. She looked down upon him sombrely and drew his head against her chest. She began to talk to him of the life she had once known. The boy listened and with her words felt a new sense of adventure.

That night Dadi-Ma bundled together their few possessions. Her plan was to leave under cover of darkness since she did not have the money to pay the landlord the rent that was owing.

They caught the train for Durban early the next morning. For Chotoo the adventure had begun. Through most of the journey he was awake, his nose flattened against the window. In the second-class coach they shared their compartment with two other women, who chatted amiably with his grandmother while he remained at her side.

When they arrived in Durban, he grabbed a handful of his grandmother's sari, and hung on while she carried the bundle of belongings on her head. In the street outside the station they got into the bus for Stanger.

It was a long drive and they passed fields of sugarcane. Dadi-Ma pointed out many things to him, drawing his attention to this or to that. He stood against the seat, his nose once again pressed to the window, lurching against her as the bus bumped and swayed. They stopped often to offload passengers on the road and it was afternoon before they arrived at their destination.

Dadi-Ma became excited as they approached the town. She asked the woman across the aisle about the bus stop. The woman told her that the bus went all the way to the market. Dadi-Ma was pleased. She knew her way from there.

They entered the town and Dadi-Ma looked around for familiar landmarks, but things had changed. The market was no longer where she had remembered it to be. It had been moved to a new location. Dadi-Ma was puzzled. She spoke to the woman again, asking where the old market was, but the woman shrugged, saying she didn't know. She did not live here, only visited occasionally.

“Ask the woman over there,” she said.

Dadi-Ma got up from her seat and Chotoo followed her, clutching the end of her sari. In her anxiety she was impatient with him. “Stay there,” she snapped.

Chotoo's eyes grew large and mournful and she was sorry that she had spoken sharply. She touched his cheek and explained that she would be back in a moment, that she was merely going to speak to the woman over there, near the front of the bus. She told him to remain in the seat so that no one could take it.

Chotoo understood and hung back.

Dadi-Ma spoke to this other woman for several minutes. Chotoo watched her and sensed her unease.

“What is it, Dadi-Ma?” he asked when she returned.

“We will have to walk a long distance,” she told him.

“Why?” he asked.

“So many questions!” she exclaimed. Then she said, “The marketplace where the bus stops is no longer where I thought it would be, they have moved it.”

The boy did not say anything; he sensed in her a new anxiety that bewildered him.

When they got off the bus at the marketplace, the woman Dadi-Ma had talked to in the front of the bus asked why they wanted to get to that particular street.

“It is where my friend Ratnadevi lives,” she said.

“Your friend lives there?” the woman asked, surprised.

“Yes, she has a small house with big trees.”

The woman fell silent. Then she shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps this friend was a servant in one of the big houses out there, she concluded.

Dadi-Ma smiled and thanked the woman.

The woman repeated her instructions, telling them to go to the end of the wide road and then to turn to the left and continue on for five more streets to where there was a big store. At that point they were to turn right and walk for several blocks until they reached the area of big houses and mansions. There they were to turn right again to the street Dadi-Ma was enquiring about. “But there is no small house there like the one you have described,” the woman said.

“From there I will know my way,” Dadi-Ma assured her. She thanked the woman, hoisted the bundle on to her head, and waited for Chotoo to get a good grip on her sari. Then she left. Her feet in the old champals flip-flopped as she walked away. The other woman watched them going.

Dadi-Ma and Chotoo walked a long way that day, stopping often to rest. Chotoo was tired and dragged on her sari and she had to urge him on with quiet words of encouragement. She talked about the trees and the birds, nurturing the anticipation which lightened his step. At the end of the road, they stopped. She took down the bundle from her head and carefully unwrapped it. Packed amongst their belongings was a bottle of water. She handed it to Chotoo who took a long drink; then after taking a sip herself, she screwed the cap back on and returned the bundle to her head.

They turned left and continued on. She recognized some of the landmarks, her heart lurching excitedly as she pointed these out to the boy. Then they turned right and suddenly nothing seemed familiar any more.

Nevertheless they pressed on, following the woman's directions. They walked all the way to the end of the street in silence. On both sides of the street were large houses surrounded by walls and fences. The open field she remembered was no longer there. Her legs automatically propelled her forward. The pain that had racked her limbs through the past few days now gave way to fear which turned her legs to jelly.

They had made the last right turn and supposedly this was the street where she had once lived. Her dark eyes looked out upon an area that was unrecognizable. Slowly and wearily they made their way to the end of the street, but Ratnadevi's house was no longer there; neither were the trees and the groves of bamboo. She took the bundle from her head. The boy raised his eyes to look at her. In her face he saw the bewilderment.

Dadi-Ma was tired now, her legs could no longer hold her weight and she sat down on the kerb, drawing the boy down beside her.

“What's wrong, Dadi-Ma? Where is Ratnadevi's house?”

Dadi-Ma's fingers moved, weaving an invisible basket.

“Dadi-Ma?” he said in a small voice.

“Hush, Chotoo. Don't worry. We'll rest a bit and then we'll find Ratnadevi's house.”

Chotoo drew close to his grandmother, resting his head on her lap for he was tired and sleepy.

* * *

The woman must have made a mistake, she thought. Ratnadevi's house was probably at the end of some other street and she would find it. A small house with a plank veranda and many trees with birds. Chotoo would be able to climb trees and pick fruit to his heart's content and sometimes he'd help them to pick bamboo for baskets.

A servant who had seen them sitting there came out of one of the houses. “Why are you sitting here?” she asked.

Dadi-Ma described the house she was searching for.

“Yes, I remember that one,” the woman said. “The house was torn down a long time ago.”

“What happened to the people who once lived here?” Dadi-Ma asked.

The woman shrugged and shook her head.

Dadi-Ma sat back; the pain that had nagged her all day, numbing her arms, suddenly swelled in her chest. The woman noticed the way Dadi-Ma's colour had changed.

“Are you all right, Auntie?” she asked.

Dadi-Ma compressed her lips and nodded. She did not want to alarm Chotoo. Did not want him to be afraid. She struggled to get up, the woman helping her to her feet.

But Chotoo saw the expression on his grandmother's face and for the first time in his life he felt insecure and uncertain about the future; felt a dreadful apprehension of being wrenched from the only human being he had ever loved.

“Dadi-Ma, Dadi-Ma,” he sobbed.

“It's all right, Chotoo, it's all right.”

But he knew that it wasn't all right, that it would never be all right again.

A
LEX
L
A
G
UMA

Alex La Guma was born in District Six of Cape Town, South Africa, in 1925. His father was an important official in the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union and the South African Communist Party. La Guma graduated from a technical school in 1945, and was fired from his job at the Metal Box Company after he had organized the workers to strike. He became involved with the Young Communist League in 1947 and the next year joined the South African Communist Party. It was not until 1957 that he published his first short story, “Nocturne.” In 1966, he left South Africa and spent the remainder of his life in exile. Among his works are
A Walk in the Night and Other Stories
(1962),
The Stone-Country
(1967),
In the Fog of the Seasons' End
(1972)
, A Soviet Journey
(1978), and
Time of the Butcherbird
(1979). In 1969 La Guma was awarded the Lotus Prize for his contributions to literature. He died in 1985.

The Lemon Orchard

(1967)

T
he men came down between two long, regular rows of trees. The winter had not passed completely and there was a chill in the air; and the moon was hidden behind long, high parallels of cloud which hung like suspended streamers of dirty cotton-wool in the sky. All of the men but one wore thick clothes against the coolness of the night. The night and earth was cold and damp, and the shoes of the men sank into the soil and left exact, ridged footprints, but they could not be seen in the dark.

One of the men walked ahead holding a small cycle lantern that worked from a battery, leading the way down the avenue of trees while the others came behind in the dark. The night close around was quiet now that the crickets had stopped their small noises, but far out others that did not feel the presence of the men continued the monotonous creek-creek-creek. Somewhere, even further, a dog started barking in short high yaps, and then stopped abruptly. The men were walking through an orchard of lemons and the sharp, bittersweet citrus smell hung gently on the night air.

“Do not go so fast,” the man who brought up the rear of the party called to the man with the lantern. “It's as dark as a kaffir's soul here at the back.”

He called softly, as if the darkness demanded silence. He was a big man and wore khaki trousers and laced-up riding boots, and an old shooting jacket with leather patches on the right breast and the elbows.

The shotgun was loaded. In the dark this man's face was invisible except for a blur of shadowed hollows and lighter crags. Although he walked in the rear he was the leader of the party. The lantern-bearer slowed down for the rest to catch up with him.

“It's cold, too, Oom,” another man said.

“Cold?” the man with the shotgun asked, speaking with sarcasm. “Are you colder than this verdomte hotnot, here?” And he gestured in the dark with the muzzle of the gun at the man who stumbled along in their midst and who was the only one not warmly dressed.

This man wore trousers and a raincoat which they had allowed him to pull on over his pyjamas when they had taken him from his lodgings, and he shivered now with chill, clenching his teeth to prevent them from chattering. He had not been given time to tie his shoes and the metal-covered ends of the laces clicked as he moved.

“Are you cold, hotnot?” the man with the light jeered.

The colored man did not reply. He was afraid, but his fear was mixed with a stubbornness which forbade him to answer them.

“He is not cold,” the fifth man in the party said. “He is shivering with fear. Is it not so, hotnot?”

The colored man said nothing, but stared ahead of himself into the half-light made by the small lantern. He could see the silhouette of the man who carried the light, but he did not want to look at the two who flanked him, the one who had complained of the cold, and the one who had spoken of his fear. They each carried a sjambok and every now and then one of them slapped a corduroyed leg with his.

“He is dumb, also,” the one who had spoken last chuckled.

“No, Andries. Wait a minute,” the leader who carried the shotgun said, and they all stopped between the row of trees. The man with the lantern turned and put the light on the rest of the party.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Wag'n oomblikkie. Wait a moment,” the leader said, speaking with forced casualness. “He is not dumb. He is a slim hotnot; one of those educated bushmen. Listen, hotnot,” he addressed the colored man, speaking angrily now. “When a baas speaks to you, you answer him. Do you hear?” The colored man's wrists were tied behind him with a riem and the leader brought the muzzle of the shotgun down, pressing it hard into the small of the man's back above where the wrists met. “Do you hear, hotnot? Answer me or I will shoot a hole through your spine.”

The bound man felt the hard round metal of the gun muzzle through the loose raincoat and clenched his teeth. He was cold and tried to prevent himself from shivering in case it should be mistaken for cowardice. He heard the small metallic noise as the man with the gun thumbed back the hammer of the shotgun. In spite of the cold, little drops of sweat began to form on his upper lip under the overnight stubble.

“For God's sake, don't shoot him,” the man with the light said, laughing a little nervously. “We don't want to be involved in any murder.”

“What are you saying, man?” the leader asked. Now with the beam of the battery-lamp on his face the shadows in it were washed away to reveal the mass of tiny wrinkled and deep creases which covered the red-clay complexion of his face like the myriad lines which indicate rivers, streams, roads and railways on a map. They wound around the ridges of his chin and climbed the sharp range of his nose and the peaks of his chin and cheekbones, and his eyes were hard and blue like two frozen lakes.

“This is mos a slim hotnot,” he said again. “A teacher in a school for which we pay. He lives off our sweat, and he had the audacity to be cheeky and uncivilized towards a minister of our church and no hotnot will be cheeky to a white man while I live.”

“Ja, man,” the lantern-bearer agreed. “But we are going to deal with him. There is no necessity to shoot him. We don't want that kind of trouble.”

“I will shoot whatever hotnot or kaffir I desire, and see me get into trouble over it. I demand respect from these donders. Let them answer when they're spoken to.”

He jabbed the muzzle suddenly into the colored man's back so that he stumbled, struggling to keep his balance. “Do you hear, jong? Did I not speak to you?” The man who had jeered about the prisoner's fear stepped up then, and hit him in the face, striking him on a cheekbone with the clenched fist which still held the sjambok. He was angry over the delay and wanted the man to submit so that they could proceed. “Listen, you hotnot bastard,” he said loudly. “Why don't you answer?”

The man stumbled, caught himself and stood in the rambling shadow of one of the lemon trees. The lantern-light swung on him and he looked away from the center of the beam. He was afraid the leader would shoot him in anger and he had no wish to die. He straightened up and looked away from them.

“Well?” demanded the man who had struck him.

“Yes, baas,” the bound man said, speaking with a mixture of dignity and contempt which was missed by those who surrounded him.

“Yes there,” the man with the light said. “You could save yourself trouble. Next time you will remember. Now let us get on.” The lantern swung forward again and he walked ahead. The leader shoved their prisoner on with the muzzle of the shotgun, and he stumbled after the bobbing lantern with the other men on each side of him.

“The amazing thing about it is that this bliksem should have taken the principal, and the meester of the church before the magistrate and demand payment for the hiding they gave him for being cheeky to them,” the leader said to all in general. “This verdomte hotnot. I have never heard of such a thing in all my born days.”

“Well, we will give him a better hiding,” the man Andries said. “This time we will teach him a lesson, Oom. He won't demand damages from anybody when we're done with him.”

“And afterwards he won't be seen around here again. He will pack his things and go and live in the city where they're not so particular about the dignity of the volk. Do you hear, hotnot?” This time they were not concerned about receiving a reply but the leader went on, saying, “We don't want any educated hottentots in our town.”

“Neither black Englishmen,” added one of the others.

The dog started barking again at the farmhouse which was invisible on the dark hillside at the other end of the little valley. “It's that Jagter,” the man with the lantern said. “I wonder what bothers him. He is a good watchdog. I offered Meneer Marais five pounds for that dog, but he won't sell. I would like to have a dog like that. I would take great care of such a dog.”

The blackness of the night crouched over the orchard and the leaves rustled with a harsh whispering that was inconsistent with the pleasant scent of the lemons. The chill in the air had increased, and far-off the creek-creek-creek of the crickets blended into solid strips of high-pitched sound. Then the moon came from behind the banks of cloud and its white light touched the leaves with wet silver, and the perfume of lemons seemed to grow stronger, as if the juice was being crushed from them.

They walked a little way further in the moonlight and the man with the lantern said, “This is as good a place as any, Oom.”

They had come into a wide gap in the orchard, a small amphitheater surrounded by fragrant growth, and they all stopped within it. The moonlight clung for a while to the leaves and the angled branches, so that along their tips and edges the moisture gleamed with the quivering shine of scattered quicksilver.