African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [169]
‘I’d like to meet that paragon,’ says one, trying to be humorous, but he laughs, most unhappily.
‘No, I think you probably wouldn’t,’ I say, attempting to match his humour. ‘You have to be brought up with this lot, you know, to understand…’ I definitely falter.
‘Hidden hearts of gold?’ says Poet B. Rather, sneers.
‘No, not exactly. But you know, some of them are trying hard.’
‘I haven’t noticed it.’
‘If they are all paternalists these days then just think what they were like before.’
‘It’s a bit late for paternalism.’
‘Well, you’re all stuck with each other–’ I say, allying myself, as it happens, with Comrade Mugabe, and his ‘We are all citizens of Zimbabwe now.’
The two young men show the signs of being trapped, restless checked movements, restless eyes, and their faces darken even more.
Poet A says, ‘And what does a Honkey know about the bush anyway?’
Here is another moment when my tongue has a weight on it.
‘He knows. My brother was the same. He had an instinct for the animals. If you went out into the bush with him, he would know where a duiker was, or a koodoo–he knew the paths they would take.’ Silence, because I was talking about my brother. Another strand was being woven into the webs of inhibition: family.
‘His cookb–his servant.’
‘OK, his cookboy,’ says Poet B bitterly. ‘Oh don’t worry, my sister’s husband’s got a good job, and she told me a man came asking for work, he said, “Do you want a cookboy, madam?’”
Laughter, this time shared absolutely, with all the history of the country behind it.
‘Your brother’s cookboy?’ invites Poet B, his hands spread open in a gesture of acceptance of fate.
‘He used to come to my brother, and ask him to go with him, and his brother–go hunting. Because my brother always knew where the animals were.’
Silence.
‘When was this?’
‘When there were still animals,’ I say, and my voice is as bitter as theirs.
‘Yes,’ says Poet A.
Poet B says, ‘I was brought up in Harare, so I would have to ask your brother too.’
‘I haven’t been to my village for…well, quite a time, two years…no three…well, it’s probably about five,’ says Poet A.
Here I could have gone on to say that my brother might have understood the ways of animals, but knew about Africans only through the veils of his prejudice–but what was the point, they knew that. My brother, and other white bush-lovers I tried, did not know that a certain tree, the muhacha tree, is sacred to the Mashona, though they must have walked under the tree, with blacks, a thousand times.
‘Really?’ says my brother, as if I were talking about another planet, ‘that’s interesting, I didn’t know that.’
He, like other white bush-lovers interpret the bush–no, not as white people, for that is not the point, but as modern people.
An anthropologist said, ‘When I’m with the old people, I have to remind myself they live in a different landscape. Each rock, tree, path, hill, bird, animal, has a meaning. If an owl calls or you see a certain bird, that is a message from another dimension. A pebble set near a path is part of a pattern. You see a bit of rag tied to a bush–watch out! It’s a bit of magic, most likely. Don’t disturb! We don’t live in that world, but the point is, their young people don’t either. They know as little about it as we do. But when I’m with the old ones I sometimes get a glimpse of a landscape that existed everywhere in the world before modern man arrived on the scene.’
In 1964 at the Independence Celebrations for Zambia, there was an exhibition of Southern Rhodesian art. Near the door as you went out was a large picture of an ancient tree. The artist stood by the picture with that look often seen in Southern Africa, ‘If you choose to notice me, choose to ask questions, you may get interesting replies.’ My companion and I stop, say, what a fine tree, and wait. The artist, an oldish man, looks closely at us, sums us up, as you may see Africans doing, and says, ‘That tree was the