The World Beneath (6 page)

T
hat night something woke Joshua. He lay in bed listening, holding his breath, half stifled in the blankets, holding the edge in his fingertips and rubbing it back and forth while his eyes and ears strained at the darkness.

It was no good. He wouldn’t sleep again now. He slipped out of the bed, careful not to disturb his mother, and stood frozen for a moment.

The room was very dark. He thought of the
tokolosh
, the little evil spirit that haunted bedrooms. The
tokolosh
was too short to reach the bed, said Beauty, as long as it was up on bricks. Still — he gulped and ran out of the room.

Outside, the moon hung low and yellow, wringing odd shadows from the trees along the path. There was a plash from the pool and a deep slow murmur of voices. He tiptoed from shadow to shadow until he saw them, sitting by the humming filtration tank. There was an air of contained excitement.

Just as he hesitated, hanging back behind the fig tree, they saw him. There was a silence and a pleased murmur, and then another silence as he came among them.

He went to each, despite his shyness, and greeted them as he had been taught, with a respectful bob of the head. Then he leaned against Tsumalo. The men were quiet. Eventually, one of them said: “The boy. We could use the boy. He could take messages.”

“No!” said Tsumalo. “It is safer if he does not know anything.”

Joshua stood quiet, pressed against him, eyes down; he was trembling. His heart leaped, a single bound, then thumped slowly and loudly in his chest.

“There is trouble coming soon,” said one of the men. He was small and narrow, with a thin face like a fox’s. “The government says that our children must be taught all their subjects in Afrikaans,” he explained, looking at Joshua. “Why should they want that? It is bound to make them do worse in their exams.”

Joshua didn’t reply. At home he had been taught in Xhosa.

There was no more talk of messages. The murmuring continued, and Tsumalo wrote in his notebook; finally, the men melted away into the grayness of the predawn.

Joshua ran back to his mother’s room. She was stirring. The Madam and the Master took their tea at seven sharp: weak, with a slice of lemon, for the Madam; strong, with hot milk, for the Master.

He sighed and shivered to convince his mother he had just been out in the cold for a pee, then slipped back into the space she had vacated, pulling the covers up high over his head and breathing in the warmth luxuriously.

Beauty did not talk much about Tsumalo, though she prepared his meals along with hers and the gardener’s, and every few days she went down to the shed and dressed his wounds. Gradually the leg became a little less swollen and the bruises began to heal; Tsumalo had to walk slowly, using the stick for balance.

Joshua could tell she worried that Mr. Malherbe — so sensitive about how much milk was drunk in his kitchen — would notice that more food was being eaten.

But white households were extravagant places. Joshua saw more food consumed in a day than his Ciskei family ate in a week. At any rate, little was said, though Goodman came in one day and asked flatly, “When is he going?”

“I don’t know. How can I know?” Beauty shrugged her plump shoulders. “He can’t go with that leg. Not yet.”

“It is no good. It is not safe.”

Goodman’s voice was pitched low; he was standing at the back door with his plate and mug in his hands, turning and turning them as he spoke.

Beauty took them, and they stood close at the door, murmuring.

“Aaai,
no, it is not true!” She broke away suddenly and disappeared into the kitchen. Joshua, who had been trying to hear the conversation, carried on with his task of pegging up the washing on the lines that stretched across the yard.

That night he woke and found the bed cold beside him, the sheet smooth. His heart leaped in his throat, and he jumped out of bed with no thought for the
tokolosh
.

He ran down the windy path to the shed. The low creepers grabbed at him. He saw the light in the window; he forgot to whistle and banged on the door with both fists. There was a shriek from inside. Tsumalo opened the door a crack.

“It is only you,” he said. He sounded relieved. Joshua was unable to speak. Then, “Mama! Mama!” he sobbed.

Tsumalo slowly opened the door. Beauty looked at him sorrowfully from the bed. She opened her arms to him.

“I just came to talk to Tsumalo,” she said. “I am going to ask my friend to look at his leg. She works at the children’s hospital. I am worried it is taking too long to heal.”

Joshua and Beauty returned to their room, but every night after that he woke again and again through the night, checking that she was still there.

He thought about the twins; he missed them a lot. Xola was plump and tough, but he cried just as much as Phumla when Beauty left.

He recalled Phumla’s narrow face and anxious eyes, her thin body clinging fiercely to their mother’s legs as they said good-bye that last time. Everyone was crying: his grandmother, the twins, the baby; the truck tooted and rocked in the dusty road as the driver played with brake and clutch to let them know it was time to go. All these things he pondered, looking into the darkness, hugging his mother so tightly that she hissed and shrugged him off, but sleepily, so he didn’t mind.

S
uddenly, everything was changing. Mrs. Malherbe arrived in the kitchen like a whirlwind, hissing and fussing, her elbows out like an angry hen in a dust patch.

The sheets in the guest room were to be changed. The room was to be spring-cleaned. The lawn was to be mowed and edged — that very day!
But it’s Wednesday,
thought Joshua. Wednesday was the day the flower beds were weeded.

He felt breathless and stood back against the chimney breast, by the side of the big stove. Mr. Malherbe was away, so it was safe to be in the kitchen. But today he didn’t feel safe.

“You!” Her lean, dried-out, angry face was right up close. Her eyes were pale blue with wrinkles cut deep into the skin around them. “You can make yourself useful for a change. I want that pool vacuumed properly this time. And I want the filter basket cleared out. Do you hear me?”

He nodded mutely.

Goodman mowed the lawn with his shoulders hunched over, a sign that he was angry. The flower beds would get out of hand. Then who would be in trouble?

Joshua stood at the side of the pool, struggling with the length and heft of the vacuum pole. You had to push it just right, very, very gently and slowly, or the dust would rise from the bottom of the pool and hang in obstinate clouds. Too slowly and it would take forever. He would still be here, at the shallow end, when Mrs. Malherbe’s son arrived this afternoon at four o’clock.

And the dead frogs would still be bobbing in the filter basket. The lemons would still be on the tree. He tried to remember all the things he still had to do, and, frowning, he pushed just a little too hard. The pole shot out of his hand and jittered across the pool.

He let it clatter against the side and ran to the lemon tree. He picked three of the biggest fruits, ran to the kitchen, and put them in the bowl. Then he ran back to the pool, squeezed his eyes shut, stuck his hand in deep, and lifted out the basket with its quota of green bodies and dumped them, without looking, on the compost heap.

By the time he got back, the dust had settled. He picked up the pole and resumed his slow sweep across the floor of the pool.

Later, from his perch in the loquat tree, he heard a car arrive with a deep throaty roar: it was a bright red sports car, with the top down. He saw the gate open, and a head of springy, curly brown hair, and a hand holding a battered carryall.

The doorbell went, the front door flew open, and Mrs. Malherbe came out. Joshua had never seen her smile so. She held on to the young man as if her arms would break with the holding.

“Robert, Robert,” was all she said.

Robert smiled too. “You’re looking well, Ma.” But as they turned together on the porch, Joshua could see the concern in his eyes. Mrs. Malherbe was thinner than ever. Her eyes were purple with shadows.

They went inside.

It seemed that Mr. Malherbe was away for longer than usual. Joshua always loved his absences; Mrs. Malherbe relaxed and so did the staff.

This time, though, it was the arrival of Robert that made it seem like a holiday. He teased Beauty and sought out Goodman and told him the garden had never looked better. He threw Joshua up in the air, terrifying him, and laughed until the boy laughed too.

Then he found Tsumalo. Normally visitors didn’t venture to the bottom of the garden. But Robert remembered the shed from when he was a child himself and went to find it. Tsumalo leaped to his feet in terror, he later told Joshua. He had thought the game was up.

But then Robert had talked to him. Robert had said he should call him Robert. Not Master or Mister Robert. Robert could be trusted, said Tsumalo.

Joshua wasn’t so sure, though it was hard not to like Robert. Even Mrs. Malherbe looked happier when he was around. But he was a white man. Like Mr. Malherbe. You never knew what they could do. What if he told?

E
vening; his special place again. He had a digestive biscuit with him, just the one; he shared it with Betsy, straight down the middle. His mother was serving the meal, and he immediately noticed the difference: Mrs. Malherbe’s voice was raised and lilting, Robert’s laugh came deep through the walls, and even his mother laughed, a giggle that was almost too quiet to hear.

Then his mother washed up and left, and Joshua heard it: the sudden change in Robert’s voice as the back door shut.

“You can’t go on like this.”

A pause. “No.”

“Then leave him.”

“I can’t.”

“You must.”

Another hesitation. “I can’t. You must see that.”

Robert’s voice rose again. “He’s a bastard.”

Her voice was bitter. “Yes.”

“Don’t you think he might stop if I talk to him? Even bastards must have some compassion.”

Compassion. This was a word Joshua had never heard. He strained to hear more. His belly felt tight across the top, as though he had eaten something that disagreed with him, or had put on a belt that was much too small.

He had heard her getting sick. Babies made you sick. Was she going to have a baby? He knew you must not hit a woman who was having a baby or she might lose it.

He listened. They had gone quiet. Then he realized it was just the silence before she began to cry: harsh, racking sobs.

He curled himself into the smallest ball he could and hugged the dog, stroking her long ears. He buried his head in the soft folds of basset skin around her neck. He was crying too, and he didn’t know why.

In the morning Mrs. Malherbe’s MG was gone. So were Mrs. Malherbe and Robert. Joshua stood silently sweeping the pool, frowning, watching the floor clear of dust in clean stripes. He felt he was only just beginning to learn how to do it. The sun was shimmering at the rusty edges of the poplar leaves.

He couldn’t see him, but he felt that Tsumalo was standing beside him.

“How’s it?” he asked.

“OK.” Tsumalo rested a hand on his shoulder, but gently, so as not to disturb the quiet rhythm of his sweeping.

“I think they are at the hospital. The car is gone.”

“Mmmmh.”
Tsumalo didn’t say another word. Together they stood and watched as the vacuum passed back and forth, wiping out the dirt, sucking out the bad, leaving only the good, clean blue floor of the pool.

Still silent, Tsumalo went for the pool net. He scooped out the leaves while Joshua cleared the filter basket. No frogs; just more leaves. The summer was on the turn. As the man twisted the pole, twisted and turned, emptying the glistening piles on the crazy paving, Joshua shivered. The leaves looked burned, misshapen, drowned.

But soon the pool was its limpid self again, glittering in the sunlight, keeping itself to itself, holding its secrets like a magic looking-glass in a story.

Tsumalo picked up his stick and left; Joshua began to lift the piles of wet leaves into a wheelbarrow.

Then Mrs. Malherbe and Robert were back. Her MG came into the driveway with the bump and scrape that meant it was loaded down, and she and Robert were laughing and unloading the trunk.