The Conservationist (6 page)

Earth in his mouth.

There is grit between his teeth; as he swallows and the heavy upper and lower molars meet they grind some microscopic boulders. Earth in his mouth. Although he did wipe his lips. He gathers saliva with his tongue and drops a string of spit into the dust.

Half-grown, half-wild cats in the roof-gutter above the kitchen door; there’s plenty of milk, but they probably don’t ever bother to feed them. — No, there is a scummy dish beside the step.
Psspsspss
. He will wash out his mouth in the bathroom. The screen door squeaks open and bangs, swinging again of its own momentum and banging a second time behind him. The kitchen smells of burned porridge and soured milk and the plates of the electric stove, although switched off, give heat like a flushed face; they cook here, of course, although they are not supposed to. In the rest of the house the floors are thick with diligently-applied polish that no one walks on.

A place to bring a woman.

The shower is dousing warm soda water over his face and turns colder and more forceful as it runs, blinding and deafening him. Once in the bathroom, it seemed a far better idea than just rinsing his mouth. The chromium snake and rose, which may be secured in a bracket on the wall above the bath or held in the hand, are in brilliant contrast to the chipped tiles decorated with peeling Bambi transfers which were the previous owners’ level of bathroom luxury. A thousand needles of water are breaking down the immobility of his face. He holds his breath and then gasps, and the water prickles delightfully into his mouth, pinging his tongue. He hears bells ringing; water beating on your head always gives the sensation of ringing. But no; something is ringing, outside his head. The telephone. It has taken several years for his aural sense to learn to respond only to the particular combination of rings on the party line — three short and one long - that is his. He goes ! naked down the passage, his spoor beading wet on the impermeable layer of wax polish.

Whenever he hears the voice of one of the locals on the phone (it is not that he knows any of them well enough to distinguish one from the other, but he recognizes the strong Afrikaans accent they all have if they speak English, and the authentic mother-tongue intonation if they speak Afrikaans) his own response takes on the firm pleasantness of the defensive, because they usually phone to complain. A straying cow has got into their lucerne or the boys have disregarded the rotation of days on which the river may be used for irrigation. But today the rather hesitant telephone voice that announces itself as De Beer (the old De Beer himself) has the slightly wheedling tone these Boers use when they want something. Afrikaans, with all its homely turns of phrase and its diminutives comfortingly formed by rounding off a word with a suffix instead of preceding it with an adjective such as ‘tiny’ or ‘little’, is better suited to this tone than English, but these people seem to ignore his ability to speak Afrikaans. Their insistence on talking to him in English demarcates the limit of his acceptance, out here, outside the city from which he comes and goes. At the same time, there have been moments when they seek to claim him: — Mehring? — A smiling, prodding, inculpatory look, as a Jew takes note of the curve of a nose, perceptible only at a certain angle in an otherwise innocent face. — Then you’re an Afrikaner, nê? — breaking into the mother tongue. They are answered in the same tongue. - It’s a German name, perhaps. From South West. A long way back. —

— Look, Mr Mehring - old De Beer is very concerned not to trouble him - Are you people at home? —

The ‘you people’ is the usage of delicacy; the farmers know there isn’t a wife around, but they also know there are sometimes carloads of visitors, and in any case, they cannot conceive of a man without a family of some sort. If he hasn’t got one, they will invent one for him, by compassionate assumption.

— Man, it’s all right then if we come over to your house? Just to have a little chat or so. It won’t be long. Perhaps you’ll be able to help us out. —

There has been a whole preamble of small talk about the weather, the drought, the usual thing before getting to the point. Because he is naked, Mehring feels like hopping with impatience. It is born of the nervous apprehension his body feels that someone may walk in: his mind is aware that no one lives in the house, there is no one to enter. Yet while he listens, smiles exasperatedly into the telephone in his right hand, his other hand plays with himself the way a small boy seeks reassurance by touching his genitals - his fingers comb the damp springy hair, draw down the foreskin that has been pushed back during the shower, weigh the uneven balls, absently tender to the one that is smaller and lighter than the other.

He dresses very quickly. It’s hardly the prospect of the visit from Meneer De Beer: it’s the shower that’s done it, got rid of that curious awakening down at the reeds and returned him to the ordinary plane of his existence. ‘You’ve got out of bed the wrong side’, the old saying; it is true that one can wake up in the wrong place. The acupuncture of water needles has restored the face with which he will meet the Boer from down the road, and the Metallgesellschaft people, tomorrow morning; meets himself in the mean rectangle of bathroom mirror. He brushes his hair. Sideburns are brindled with grey. Even naked: the face is the kind Metallgesellschaft would recognize.

Alina ! He yells out the back door.

Alina !

It’s a nuisance that the very day he needs them - Sunday - is naturally the day they want to gallivant off. In the sitting-room he struggles to push up the rusty wire flyscreens and open some windows. Any visitors he may have from the farms round about will always look more at home in here than he does; he bought the house
voets-toets,
lock, stock and barrel, nylon pile ‘suite’, rickety three-legged coffee tables, Rhodesian copper firescreen with embossed Flame Lily, wrought-iron plant stand - except for family photographs it is exactly their own sitting-rooms. There is even an upright piano with holes where candle-brackets must have been screwed; occasionally when one of his own friends strays up to the house, a key will be struck, in amusement: sometimes there is a note, sometimes just the small thud of the hammer’s pad. He has offered to give the heirloom away to anyone who will come and take it - an offer that brings a laugh. He keeps a transistor radio on the sideboard that is his bar and the receptacle for farm accounts, and now he switches on to hear the news, forgetting that it is broadcast at a later hour on Sundays. The full panoply of a noisy symphony distends the whole house; it seems, when the entourage troops in through the front door (he has forgotten it hasn’t been used for months, there is a delay while he opens up for them) that truly the house is peopled, throughout the rooms they don’t see, with movement and voices.

They are quite a delegation; the whole family expects to go along if there’s an outing of any kind on a Sunday afternoon. Old De Beer has brought young De Beer, and young De Beer has with him young Mrs De Beer and child. There is also an adolescent girl who looks like young Mrs De Beer, probably a sister. He has seen them all, or a similar combination of the family, looking out from under ceremonious hats, when their car passed on their way home from church on the farm road, this morning. That’s how they knew he’d be at the farm.

They are people who won’t dispose themselves about a room until you tell them to. Come in, come in, sit down... They stand grouped slightly behind old De Beer. Please come inside.

Even when they are settled (looking round at the chair seats before placing their backsides, as if they’re afraid of sitting on something or doing some damage) they remain hidden behind his shirt-tails — they don’t speak. The child is so bashful, she’s a vine wound to her mother’s thick, young, knees-together legs. Hansie De Beer runs the farm, he’s the one Mehring usually deals with, but in his father’s presence he ventures no opinions unless the old man turns his face to him. Old De Beer is a handsome man, his clothes filled drum-tight with his body; there ought to be a watch-chain across it, but there isn’t, he wears on his wrist instead the latest Japanese electronic watch with a dial like something off an instrument panel. The retaining wall of belly and bunch of balls part the thighs majestically. Oh to wear your manhood, fatherhood like that, eh, stud and authority. The coatsleeves are stuffed with flesh that gives the arms the angle to lie monumentally on chair-arms — Mehring is going over these stock points, forgetting his duty to offer beer. The old man’s Kaiser face, Edward VII face, regards him un-yieldingly a moment; the son and the woman don’t respond. Christ, they probably don’t drink on Sundays, the son is afraid to say yes.

The old man’s hoarse slow voice: — Perhaps if you’ve got brandy. I’ll take a brandy. —

Easy now, for Hansie. -Thanks very much, beer. —

- Have you perhaps got a cold drink? - The wife makes a soft, little girl’s request, she wouldn’t be allowed to drink in front of the father-in-law anyway, Sunday or no Sunday.

— Just a drop of water in it. That’s enough. No, that lucerne of yours was not so bad you know, not so bad at all. But why don’t you plant the top veld there - you know, by your boys’ kraal, right up to Delport’s fence - before, you know, when (he looks to his son, who supplies the name) - when Jacobs had this place, it was always lucerne there. It’ll do well, man. There’s not much frost there. With your water you can keep it going right through the winter. —

— Oh I’ve had mealies there. They did exceptionally well. -

— Mealies! Yes man ... but now the mealies are all reaped. If you had lucerne, now. You’ll get a good price for lucerne if you’ve got it in winter. — He speaks to the city business man, he even smiles under the sweep of moustache that hides his lip: — That’s the law of supply and demand, hey? —

Mehring gives a hostly laugh, and the son backs it up. The young woman is whispering fiercely all the time in asides to the children, who are occupied sharing out a Coke that, despite the traffic in his kitchen, has been lying in the refrigerator untouched for weeks. -Just a minute, maybe I can find another bottle. -

— No, no, it’s plenty for them. —

The child will sink, she will drown if she lets go of her mother, yet her clinging is flirtatious, she tries to make him look at her so that she may at once hide her head against the mother’s thigh. She’s a beautiful child as their children often are - where do they get them from? - and she’ll grow up - what do they do to them? - the same sort of vacant turnip as the mother. - Sorry, I’ve run out, I’ve been away. - To go into one of those women must be like using the fleshy succulent plants men in the Foreign Legion have to resort to.

— Not so bad. The only thing, the bales didn’t weigh fifty pounds ... isn’t that so ... — (Now addressing, calling in Hansie when he needs him.)

— No, it’s true, it was a bit less than you ... it doesn’t matter ... —

They bought lucerne from him - before Japan; Six weeks ago? - before that, or later?

— We lost about ten per cent on it- Hansie is forced by a look to nod confirmation of this.

— It must have dried out. Because it wasn’t the boys who weighed, I know I did it myself. -

It was the week before that business with the police. He hadn’t come out to the farm at all. Perhaps they knew; the old man with his intelligent brown eyes might know. They expected it of a city man like himself to leave things to the boys.

- You can’t trust a kaffir about the scale, I can tell you that. You can teach them as much as you like. It doesn’t matter to them, you see, if it’s so much or so much. To them it seems the same. They’ll know better just by picking it up on their backs. I’ve had some boys who can tell how much you’ll get, just picking the bales up. -

They are all laughing quite admiringly, even old De Beer himself, even young Mrs De Beer, tossing her head piled with Grecian curls behind a nylon scarf, her chin pressed back against her pink neck with exactly her child’s bashful gesture — It’s true, you know, that’s quite true what my father-in-law say —

Putting out a hand to stop the angle of the bottle over his glass in indication that the second tot should rise no farther, old De Beer is in full command, now, not even Mehring will break in on him unless he chooses to make way. — But what I wanted to ask - you can p’raps do me a favour, you know. I’ve got a lot of building material and stuff that I’ve got to pick up. A mass of stuff. And there’s only that small van, except for the milk truck, and I can’t take that, you see, the milk’s got to go into town every morning —

They want to borrow the little pick-up, of course. It’s not necessary to wait for them to ask, not neighbourly. He is used to the conventions of open-handedness, sauna baths and trips to the Kruger Park. — But take my Toyota, why not? I’ll tell my boy. What day d’you want it? —

— Two days or so — Hansie ventures to put in.

— You see it’s out in Rustenberg, my late uncle’s place-Young Mrs De Beer cannot resist being expansive about something that must be recognized as within her province of interest. — He just passed away. Mmm, it was terrible, for a long time now he couldn’t - you know - couldn’t hold down his food. Not even water. —

The old man does not so much as acknowledge her as the source of prattle. He is looking sideways under his lids as if the interruption were something that has just walked through the room, his hand is raised and his lips are open, taking breath between sentences. - Monday will do. Monday will be all right. -

- My auntie wants to give up the place, yes, shame. —

— With pleasure. You just tell my boy, whenever it suits you. I don’t think we’ll be needing it for anything this week. -

— Oh that boy of yours — Two palms convivially flat on spread thighs, old De Beer alows another smile under the moustache. — He uses the tractor when he wants to go around to his friends, he doesn’t need the truck. —

He takes the joke against himself appreciatively; it is anyway at the same time a gesture of solidarity, from them, one employer telling another what he ought to know.

The old man refuses a third brandy. It looks as if they are going to go; but they don’t. The children have tripped out into the yard and returned with a captured kitten bunched up against the little one’s chest along with her skirt.