The Conservationist (7 page)

— You’re a man who travels all over. You must know about these things - there’s a family bible and other old stuff. Very old. Antique. Antique, hey? I think people pay a lot of money for old things these days. For investment, hey? You must come over to our place. I’ll let you have a look at it, when we bring it here. -

- Interesting, yes. —

— I collect myself. I have signed photographs of all our prime ministers. Since General Botha. My
father
fought with General Botha - you know that? And his father (a pause for attention) my
grandfather
- he fought in the Kaffir Wars. I have a coloured portrait of the late Dr Verwoerd, personally signed for me. I met him in Pretoria in July, nineteen-sixty. Yes. And I’ve got one signed by John Vorster, too. -

The terrified kitten escapes, skittering across the linoleum and under the sideboard. The mother is sucking the first joint of the child’s finger to take away the sting of a scratch. The child’s reddened face threatens them all with tears.

— Five chairs that belonged to my mother’s mother. They say they came from the Cape. Originally. But I’m interested in history — you understand. That’s my hobby. The history - of — the - Afrikaner. That’s what I like. Not furniture and so on. General Botha gave the photograph to my father himself, my father’s name is written on its — Henrik Barend De Beer, in General Botha’s handwriting —

The elder girl, motherly towards smaller ones as only black or Afrikaans children are, waggles the distraction of something she has picked up from the fireplace, and the threat dies down, but Hansie says in Afrikaans — No, she’ll break it, put it back. —

What is it anyway? There is nothing in the room, the house, that he values. What the elder girl is holding, uncertain whether to replace it or not, is one of those crude carvings of a black warrior with a spear and miniature hide shield that people buy in souvenir shops or airports all over Africa. He doesn’t know how it got into the house; the spear’s missing from the hole in the hand where these things are usually stuck.

- Let her take it. It’s nothing. -

- But don’t you want to keep it? - the mother says, knowing he’s a travelled man.

— I don’t know how it got here. You can buy them anywhere. -

— My grandfather - old De Beer is saying, risen from his chair without difficulty, considering his weight - My father’s father, had a kaffir doll they took from the chief’s place, there when they burned it in the war. Did you ever hear of Mod-jadji’s Kraal? Just near there. —

— A kaffir doll? —

— There in the Northern Transvaal. You know about the kaff rain queen? Well, up in those parts. One of their dolls they used for magic. It’s not much left of it; there were feathers and little bags of rubbish tied to it, but it’s old now. — The big shoulders move to indicate it is still somewhere around.

— You should hang on to that, Meneer de Beer. Museums in America pay fortunes these days to get hold of those things. -

- Say thank you nicely to the uncle. —

They take a detour, by way of the paddock where newly-calved cows are confined, to their car, trailing along behind Mehring and old De Beer. Hansie gives some advice about a calf. Jacobus has appeared in his gum-boots and torn overalls and is carrying feed; fortunately he always seems to remember you can’t drink and work at the same time. The vet has been to took at the calf; hardly off the plane from Tokyo when there was Jacobus on the phone, wanting the vet to be sent for.

- But is it taking the milk, now? —

- Yes, baas, she’s eat now. —

— But why does it still lie down all the time? Doesn’t it walk about? —

- Yes, baas, she’s walk. -

Jacobus, before the neighbouring farmer, agrees with everything that Mehring says, rather than gives an independent answer. He stands as if he has been called up in front of a class. Then, as though demonstrating what he has been taught, as though he didn’t do this every day when these men who are watching him are not there, he slops the mash with balletic accuracy into the troughs, spreads the hay in the byres.

— You’ve got this place going nicely. — Old De Beer graciously condescends by pretending to defer.

— This master will take the pick-up tomorrow or some other day this week. You’ll look out for him and give him the key, eh? —

With a sort of skip, knees bent, Jacobus has come to attention again. He agrees: Yes, baas.

While they are getting into the car a black man is trudging past carrying a plastic can; the endless Sunday traffic from compound to compound, every farm is a thoroughfare for them, nothing can be done about it: it is the same at De Beer’s place. But this one hails Mehring, he’s only a little drunk:
Mina funa lo job?
The tone is more threat than question. — No job! - Mehring throws up his hands.

Hansie is at least allowed to do the driving. - There’s a lot of loafers about. It’s that location. I can wish we were a hundred miles away from that location. Honestly. And you even had some skelm lying murdered in your place. It’s not safe. -

Old De Beer dismisses womanish speculation.

— My boys know I’ll shoot anyone I find coming near my cattle at night. They know that. They let their friends know that. —

The small child is prompted by the mother to wave from a window as the car drives away.

— What’s he going to do with the pick-up? - Jacobus follows at a short distance, back to the house, the way he does when he’s about to make a request. The farmer has turned round; they are facing each other, not really close enough for a conversation.

— He’s got some things to fetch from Rustenberg. - He turns back and is walking on while he speaks. They reach the screen door together and Jacobus comes in behind him: — Why he doesn’t take his brother’s lorry? —

— I don’t know. What brother? Has he got a brother here? —

A snort and a smile. — That’s his brother, at Theronshoop. -

They know everything about us. He wonders whether he should say something about the tractor. Oh what the hell, if it gives the old devil a thrill; so long as it doesn’t harm the tractor. There will be another time, sometime, when he feels more like delivering himself of a reproach. — Well, what’s your trouble, Jacobus? - Like a dog, the man scents he’s in the mood to hand out something. To get at the cigarettes in his trouser-pocket, he has to lift his body by expanding his chest, he takes three from the pack and the cupped hands are immediately there to receive them. With two fingers Jacobus puts them into the breast pocket of his overalls.

All serious discussions of farm business are held here in the kitchen, standing up. — Master, we must have another boy for the cows. -

— For the cows! But what’s wrong with Solomon and Phineas and Witbooi? —

- Witbooi he’s ... master, he’s getting little bit old. - But it sounds as though the notion has just presented itself to be seized upon as a reason.

— Have you been quarrelling, you boys? What’s Witbooi done? —

-No, no, Witbooi he’s all right. We are nice together. You know that long time.
Another
boy. He can help Witbooi. —

— No more boys! The winter’s coming. Hey, Jacobus? What d’we want more boys for, there’s nothing much growing! No, no, you tell Witbooi to carry on. —

He is smiling, laughing almost, chivvying. The black man is slowly pushed into smiles, too, first nodding his head, then shaking it, slowly, but still smiling, distressed, half laughing.

- All right, Jacobus. —

He locks the door of the sideboard where the liquor is kept; stands looking round a moment in this room that so seldom holds people: they have left their dents in the chair cushions. The well-regulated demands and responses between the Boers and himself, the usual sort of exchange between his black man and himself have re-engraved the fine criss-cross of grooves on which his mind habitually runs. The empty space that was clear in him this afternoon is footprinted over, it exists no more than does a city pavement under the comings and goings of passing bodies that make it what it is. He recognizes with something like pleasure the onset of the usual feeling he has on Sunday night - a slight anticipatory impatience to set off for the city. Just as on Sunday morning he is ready to get out of it. The rhythm of these alternating feelings is simple and dependable as the daily cognisance of peristaltic activity that presages his bowel movement, along with the after-breakfast cigarette. As he’s about to leave the house, he thinks of that kitten. Down on his knees, face tightened and reddened by the bending, he peers under the sideboard. Dust there, the tidemark where the wax polish, describing the arc of the polishing cloth, ends. Well, he’s got something better to do ... He’ll tell Jacobus to tell Alina, on the way out. There was a marble in the dust against the wainscot. He has picked it up for his son; finds it in his hand. He is negotiating the dip where the road turns out of the farm entrance, past the post where a mealiecob and a white rag flag are still stuck up to indicate the mealies that were for sale six weeks ago, and the marble presses like a cyst between his right palm and the steering wheel. His son is sixteen now. He tries awkwardly to wind down the window on that side, still holding the marble. When the window is open the hand hesitates. He has tossed the marble not out of the window, but into the open shelf under the dashboard.

... I ask also for children, that this village may have a large population, and that your name may never come to an end.

Jacobus had six pieces of brown paper torn from a sugar bag from the Indian shop, spread on the ground before his haunches. He took three cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his overalls. His hands were slender and long-boned but the fingertips were calloused and they seemed to juggle the white tubes like the sensitive but hard points of a crab’s claws; there was only one nail, the thumbnail, long enough to slit the cigarettes open, and it was too thick to do so without spilling the contents. Dismissing his own laziness at trying to do things the amateurish way, he took out of the trouser section of the overalls, that were very large and folded over on themselves under a belt, so that the fly ran diagonally from where the division between his legs must be to where his left hip must be, a lozenge tin containing the proper equipment. In it was a broken razor blade; he slit the three cigarettes neatly and divided their tobacco onto the six bits of brown paper.

— What about the Dutchman at the other farm? The brother of the one who came yesterday. He can try there. —

They were resting; they had been feeding the dry and stripped mealie plants into a machine that chopped up the stuff for cattle fodder; tissue-thin fragments of leaf, millimetre strips of bamboo-smooth stalk, flecks of pith like spit, clung lightly to them in a dust complex as snow-flakes. Their old hats protected the heads of three, but the bare wool of the fourth, whose possibilities of finding a job were in question, was linted with it.

— That’s no good. -

— He went there. —

The first bit of brown paper with its pile of tobacco was rolled, licked, handed out. — He’d better try town. —

It was not necessary to remind Jacobus that a farm labourer has no papers for town. He must have something in mind.

— They’re short at the abattoir. —

— Who told you that? —

— Alina’s daughter’s husband said. —

The man was given a smoke, too. He had not worked with them the whole morning but had come to look for them, down from the compound, falling into the rhythm of their work, an hour or two ago.

Someone made a loud tongue-click, followed by a sharp, grunted squeak of scepticism, and another click.

— That’s the municipality, isn’t it? They’re going to take someone without a town pass? I’ve never heard of it. The municipality? —

— We can all go to earn money in town then! —

— Yes — Jacobus offers for what it’s worth, his voice rising slightly — You can ask the daughter’s husband, he’ll tell you. They are short. They’ll take you on. That’s what he said once. —

A figure went by on a bicycle, pumping regularly from left leg to right, singing without words as a man does when the wind of his own passage, in his ears, makes him confident that because he can scarcely hear himself, no one else can, either. One of them called teasingly after him; he had not noticed them under the open shelter of the barn.

— I can go and ask on the telephone. — For Jacobus, if not for them, it was simple as that.

— Who will you ask on the telephone? —

The young man had propped his bicycle near by, and joined them, without interruption, respectful of a conversation he could not at once expect to follow. He was wearing his black and white checked cap, green bell-bottoms, shoes and socks, yellow orlon-knit shirt; the day-off clothes set him apart like a bridegroom among his familiars.

— Come on. I can go up to the house now and phone William at the India’s. William can come to the phone. They’ll call him. He can ask Alina’s daughter. — Jacobus reeled off answers to all their doubts and objections before they could formulate them.

Still they hesitated. He laughed. They knew that he had the keys of the house, that he could go in and out when he liked. Perhaps it was true that he could even phone the Indian shop and ask to speak to one of the men who worked there. Perhaps the Indian would agree to let him come to the phone.

— Let’s go. I’m going to the house. - It didn’t matter to him whether they accompanied him or not.

While they walked past the stall where the bull was ruminating and the shed where the spike-tooth cultivator and other combinations of steel teeth and blades lay half-disassembled (Jacobus stepped aside to push some vulnerable part nearer its fellow components) someone said — Why didn’t those people say anything about it when he was staying there with them? —

This time the man answered for himself. — They didn’t tell me. I don’t know. —

— I only say, I remember what Alina’s daughter’s man said to me. Perhaps it’s too late. We can find out, eh, we can ask. On the telephone. -

He went into the open garage and took the kitchen door key from his hiding-place up with the bundles of onions that he was drying from the rafters. The house stank of cat’s pee. They trooped into the living-room behind him, walking softly, with slightly bent knees. The elderly Rhodesian, Witbooi, took off his hat. They stood while Jacobus’s finger went down numbers written on the margin of a calendar with a picture of a white woman without clothes. He turned the crank of the telephone, picked up the receiver, all the time keeping the forefinger of his other hand on the number, and then, after a hesitant beginning, repeated the first digit and spelled out all four to the operator. He did not look at them while waiting for the call to be connected. The Sunday paper was lying on the floor of the room. There were empty bottles beside the chairs. The ashtrays were full.