The Conservationist (15 page)

— You can’t be there to think for them forever. Do they realize? And what will happen then. —

Yinifuna?
How much you want - twenty-five cent? This one thirty-five cent, this one twenty-five —

The black man’s hand, permanently curled to the grip of spade or hoe, the nails opaque, thick, split as worn horn, did not presume to touch, but wavered from one to the other. He stank like an old hide. Children waiting their turn to be served after him rested soft lips on the counter edge, putting out their tongues now and then to stem the snot sliding down from their noses.

— It’s all right to enjoy yourself while you’re young. But can you talk to them. They don’t realize. —

The small faces gluey with smeared mucus and dust stared at the old man sitting on his chair with ankles crossed, round white cap on his bearded head, hands clasped under his belly and first finger twitching to some beat of his being, and he stared back, not because he was seeing them but because that was the line and level of his daily gaze, as from a window, into the shop.

— Their minds are I don’t know ... somewhere —

Bismillah put out a quick palm, fingers impatiently signalling advance; a small black claw thrust a two-cent coin and got four fish-shaped sweets from the glass jar bleary with powdered sugar. - I can’t discuss. You would think they would be concerned, but nobody shows any interest. An opinion, at least; they have got matric, they read the papers, don’t they. —

He understood a question or demur in his father’s silences. - Jalal, all right - but then with him it goes too far the other way, he would only get us all into trouble. I was drinking some tea at three o’clock this morning. She said to me what are you so restless for? Nothing, I said to her, nothing, go and make some tea. What am I so restless for. How can I just lay my head on the pillow at night. Do they realize? What good does it do to lie awake, she says to me. Easy to say. —

The old man began to wheeze and clear his throat in the sign that he was about to speak.

Bismillah flourished the till closed and turned the red-stoned ring on his finger, working it with his thumb, talking excitedly as if he already had been interrupted. — Bulbulia says it will be very difficult this time. He’s not at all sure what he can do. Don’t count on it. He’s a clever man, I trust him, never mind what Jalal says - but he can only do what he can do, we have to understand that. Where will it come from? Do the children realize? They only know how to spend. If I have to pay again, all right, I’ll pay. He knows. But he says there’s a new man in charge and he has to go carefully. Of course. He’s a lawyer after all. —

The old man’s voice came at last as a note sustained by the stiff and gasping bellows of an old organ. — We trust in God. —

— What? Yes, God. If God will help us. —

He and the old man watched each other; he had his back slumped to the counter and his maroon woollen waistcoat wrinkled under full pectorals.

— One who is not a Dutchman - the old man spoke again. - One from town. A businessman. —

Bismillah moved his head weavingly. After a moment he granted : — You’re still thinking about the one with the Mercedes. But why should a man like that be willing? He doesn’t need money. Why should he want to get mixed up. A wealthy white man like that comes out just, you know, for a Sunday. You can see it. To show his friends the country. He doesn’t want the money. He doesn’t want a general store in his name. With a Dutchman, that’s different. These people around here always need money; all these farms are mortgaged. If you could know just the one that happens to need it badly enough - three hundred rands? five hundreds - perhaps you can come to an arrangement ... —

The old man’s finger shook faster in disbelief of the efficacy of the sum.

— A thousand. All right. They will get the last penny from us if you want something from them. There Jalal is right. But can he tell me what to do if we won’t pay a white to get the licence in his name? Does he tell us where to go and make a living then? —

The old man said — Not a Dutchman. Perhaps ... You never know. He’s a businessman himself. He can only say no. —

-And go to hell, and who you bloody think you are- But Bismillah spoke to himself, in English, turned away already from his father and mumbling, out of the old man’s hearing, his menace towards another who would not understand, one of the noisy kind who had come into the shop full of the courage of beer. -
Ufunani
? What’s he want - ay? If he want something all right. Otherwise he must get out, no shouting. No shouting in this shop, you see? —

William said - He come speak to you. -

— You give him what he wants. —

The man wore a worker’s uniform, overalls with gum-boots that had some sheen of red and rusty liquid dried on them.

— What’s he want with me? - Bismillah addressed William although the man had planted himself where the storekeeper had come out from behind his counter.

— I want Dorcas’ money. —

— What’s he talking. I don’t know what he’s talking. —

— This the husband of Dorcas, the girl there. — A jerk of William’s head to the back of the store, the house.

— I don’t know anything about any money. —

— Dorcas is the girl for your house, yes? You pull back two rand when you pay this month. Why you pull back two rand? —

— I don’t know who you are. I don’t hear anything about money from you - do you work for me? That girl works for me, isn’t it? —

— Why you pull back two rand? —

— This husband for Dorcas. He want talk you. —

— You tell Dorcas to talk to me. I don’t know this man. —

— Tell me, why you pull back two rand? —

— You get out of my shop, I don’t know what you want here. —

— He stay with Dorcas in the yard. —

— Now get out, I don’t want to see you here or in the yard, you understand? You get out. —

All around inside they stood back detachedly. A squabble between hens or a dog-fight might have broken out between their feet. William’s face became crooked with responsibility; in a seizure of self-control that took him more violently than any rage he low and urgently forced the man to back out, step by step before his hissing whispers. Their ranks closed again, waiting to buy; all owed money, were owed money, were in need of money, knew it was no good expecting to get anything from those other kinds of people, Indian or white, who always had money - there was nothing remarkable about what had just passed. Bismillah straightened his maroon woollen waistcoat as if he had been manhandled and went back calmly to put his counter between them and him.

But William went through his own people with the aura of something dangerous standing away from his body like the rising of hair to static electricity. His eyes plunged into the blindly while his hands exchanged goods for the coins warmed in their clutch. His presence was a sensation, as the argument had not been. — She bought things and can’t pay the shop, eh? - There was amazement at the risk this casual speaker was taking. William stood breathing so that they could all hear. His voice struck — You talk about your own business, woman. — They bought what they wanted and went away.

The husband of Dorcas had joined the Three Bells Christmas Club in March and the receipts for his payments, with the emblem of bells and a sprig of green with berries, tied together by a red ribbon, were folded small each month in his pass-book. No one else in the Indians’ yard belonged to a Christmas Club. Nobody else there worked in town and knew that such things existed. Nobody even knew what a Christmas Club was; he had spent the best part of a whole evening explaining, when he brought the membership card and first receipt home, and after that, other people had heard that he had joined something and come to hear about it, all over again. He also had the leaflet the club gave out at the abattoir, and this had been handed round. For the benefit of those who could not read English, he had translated: here was what you must pay every week — 30 cents for the Family Parcel No. 1, 35 cents for the Family Parcel No. 2, 45 cents for the Bumper Parcel. Then there was the list of what was in the parcel he would get, according to his weekly payments when Christmas came. He would be bringing home, on the 15th December, Family Parcel No. 1, which included in addition to flour, candles and matches, soap, jelly and custard powder, 1 Large Tin Peaches, 2 Tins Nestlé’s Cream, 1 Tin Sausages, 1 tin Corned Beef, 1 Tin Fancy Biscuits, 1 lb Coffee, 1 lb Cooking Fat, and a Grand Surprise Packet of Sweets for The Children. Everyone recognized the bells, because of school and church, but several people asked what was the green sprig with white berries? Even Dorcas’s husband had not been able to say from what bush it came.

He took out the receipts and unfolded them and spread them smooth with the hammering heel of his hand, one by one. He tore them up one by one and then swept the pieces from the packing-case table to the floor with a blow of the flat of his hand that went on pounding while he shouted. The wood caved and splintered. The candle in the saucer went over and an enamel plate with the remains of mealie-pap and gravy bowled off, ringing against whatever it struck. He kicked at the hens that rushed for the food. Dorcas was sobbing with regular energy, like a pump, her arms round the sewing machine. The rhythm changed to screams among the skittering, squawking fowls and people came in to interfere, argue and take sides. Someone carried the sewing machine to safety. William was there. - You want the police? I tell you he won’t listen to me next time if you make trouble like this, I can’t stop him —

Dorcas’s husband put a hand at the neck of his overalls and tore down, ripping the buttons. — All thrown out, everywhere, all the Indias. No more taking our money. Kick them out. This is not India’s country. You’ll see, one day all Indias must get out. Let them get out. -

— And if the bloody shit is thrown out of this place? - The two words in English bubbled up in William’s anger. —
Bloody shit
, where will
you
live, ay? You’ll sleep in this yard if your wife doesn’t work for him, you think? This’s going to be your place if he is kicked out? - William’s laughter pummelled savagely.

— Finish! No Christmas! No sewing machine! Everything finish and out. The government will throw them away. We are going to throw them away with the white people-An old man who had heard out many fights said — They know how to speak with white people in the government. Very clever people, the India people, very clever. -

— Finish! No Christmas! Get! —

Rage sank to wrangling and became almost social. Dorcas, still weeping, took her youngest child and a cousin and went in the dark, on foot, to spend the night with Alina at the farm. Very late, her husband, who had not lain down in his blankets, whose feet felt tethered to the weight of the boots in which he worked in blood all day at the abattoir, took the keys from the nail in the room where William was sleeping. He sprang the padlocks on the gates and dragged them wide. The dogs were barking as he rode his bicycle without a light up the empty road but he did not look back.

In the morning, William found the gates open. Inside the dogs snarled and raced up and down before the gap, up and down, as if, for them, the pattern of closed gates was still barred across their eyes.

Golden reclining nudes of the desert.

Montego Bay. Sahara. Kalahari. Namib.

There are beaches of black sand where he has been to.

Wherever he has come from, there are hours on the way home over Africa when there is nothing down there. Sometimes it’s at night and all you are aware of is perhaps a wave or two of turbulence, a heave from the day’s heat, even at thirty thousand feet. Sometimes it’s a day flight, clear, and even at thirty thousand feet you can squint down from the window-seat at long intervals and see it there, soft lay after lap of sand, stones, stones in sand, the infinite wreckage not of a city or a civilization but the home that is the earth itself. Sometimes there is a sandstorm down where you can’t see, and even thirty thousand feet up the air is opaque. The plane is privately veiled, hidden in sand, buried in space. Nothing is disclosed.

Once this winter he had to take a tourist class booking because - such is the number of people like himself travelling about the world on expense account - first class was full. At least he had a vacant seat beside him, in the tourist cabin. But at Lisbon a Portuguese family came aboard and after sulky looks between the two daughters who both wanted to sit with mama, one of them had to take the seat. So that was the end of his intention to lift the dividing arm and spread himself for sleep. It was midnight. She was a subdued girl, not pretty, nor perfumed beside him when the cabin lights were lowered and conversations gave way to hen-house shufflings. She had not said good evening, just looked at him with cow-eyes, someone who never got her own way, resigned to any objections that might be made as she approached the seat. When the hostess offered rugs she opened her thin mouth in a soundless mew of thanks. He was aware that she twisted her body, several times, to look back where mama and sister were sitting some rows away but she couldn’t have been able to see much. He could hear her swallow, and sigh, as if they were in bed together. He was not comfortable, although he had the advantage of the angle of window and seat to wedge the postage-stamp pillow against; of course she had settled her forearms along the armrests and he could not lean the other way without crowding her. She had the light soft rug drawn up to her chin and it touched against his left hand, lying on his thigh. Touched and drew almost away, touched and drew almost away, as she breathed, he supposed. He pushed it off and as he did so the side of his hand brushing a hand - hers, now lying, apparently, loosely against her thigh parallel with his - made of the movement a gesture of rejection: to excuse himself he corrected the movement into an impersonally polite one of replacing slipping covering.

Who spoke first?

Was it at all sure that it was he? Here in the dark (only dim, if he opened his eyes; the centre panels of light were off and it was the tiny reading bulb, no bigger than the light in the tail of an insect, of someone a few seats back that gave shape to what was next to him) here in the dark a hand lies half curled against a thigh. The thigh is crossed (he guesses) over another, or its inner side swells laid against a second identical to it.