The Sun Between Their Feet: Collected African Stories Volume Two. Doris Lessing
none of us wanted. What would she say if she saw those tears? ‘One cannot help feeling it would have been more useful to feel for me when I was still alive’? No, she would never say a thing like that; but we can have no illusions now, after that last remark of hers, which revealed the Aunt Maud she had been so carefully concealing all these years. And she would know we were not weeping for her at all.
We cannot leave the black box. We finger the laces, stroke the wood. We come back to it again and again, where it lies on the table in the room in which she is waiting for the funeral people. We do not look at her, who is now no more than a tiny bundle under the clothes. And slowly, slowly, in each of us, an emotion hardens which is painful because it can never be released. Protest, is that what we are feeling? But certainly a protest without bitterness, for she was never bitter. And without pity, for one cannot imagine Aunt Maud pitying herself. What, then, is left? Are we expected to go on, for the rest of our lives (which we hope will be as long as hers) feeling this intolerable ache, a dull and sorrowful rage? And if we all feel, suddenly, that it is not to be borne, and we must leap up from our chairs and bang our fists against the wall, screaming: ‘No, no! It can’t be all for nothing!’ – then we must restrain ourselves and remain quietly seated; for we can positively hear the scrupulous little voice saying: ‘There are some things one does not do.’
Slowly, slowly, we become still before the box, and now it seems we hold Aunt Maud in the hollow of our palms. That was what she was; now we know her.
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 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 their 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 fanner. 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 he 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,