African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [18]
This was rhetorical, for how could he have told me?
As he mentioned the farm, a silent No gripped me. In 1956, I could have gone to see the farm, the place where our house had been on the hill, but I was driving the car and could not force myself to turn the wheel off the main road north, on to the track that leads to the farm. Every writer has a myth-country. This does not have to be childhood. I attributed the ukase, the silent No to a fear of tampering with my myth, the bush I was brought up in, the old house built of earth and grass, the lands around the hill, the animals, the birds. Myth does not mean something untrue, but a concentration of truth.
‘You aren’t thinking of going back?’ asks Harry. ‘I was, yes.’
‘Then don’t. I’m warning you. There are farms all over the place now. And I couldn’t even find the hill at first.’
‘Couldn’t find the hill?’
‘I drove past the turn-off because I couldn’t see the hill. Then I realized I was expecting to see the old house up there, and so I went back. To cut a long story short, they sliced the top off our hill.’
‘Sliced off…’
‘Yes, There is a plateau up there. It is flat. God knows what it cost them, cutting it off and levelling it.’
I am filled with anguish. Harry gives me a cautious glance and hesitates.
‘Go on.’
‘Right, but you won’t like it.’
‘But it was a steep hill. I know things look big when you’re a child, but it was a good-sized hill, wasn’t it? I used to sit at the door at the back and look down on the hawks circling over the big field.’
‘And at the bottom of the hill we had to change into second gear to get up it at all.’
‘And the car used to slant so steeply we used to joke it would fall over backwards.’
‘And when we rode down the hill on our bicycles we went flying so fast…’
‘And we looked down over everything, barns, the cattle kraals, the Ayreshire track.’
‘You still do that, look down, but wait, they planted fruit trees and you’d never believe it once was just wild, just the bush.’
We look at each other in horror.
‘Fruit trees? What happened to the big muwanga tree? The grove of acacias? Do you remember, we called them butterfly trees? The caterpillar tree–it was always full of caterpillars, it looked as if it had felted over and the cocoons were inside the felt…’
‘I don’t remember the caterpillars. But I told you, just don’t go back. I don’t know how to explain it, but it did me in. When I got back here from that trip, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t get over it. And the animals are all gone. The birds are gone. I kept dreaming about the old house. And then Monica died. I feel everything is gone.’
‘Let’s go for a walk now,’ I say.
And so we go walking, through bush, but now the bush is something that fills spaces between farms and homesteads. It is a suburban bush.
‘Do you ever think how bloody lucky we were?’ he asks. ‘We lived in Eden and didn’t know it.’
‘It’s gone for ever.’
‘Gone,’ and I hear my own voice, like a Messenger come to announce defeat in battle.
‘Gone. But sometimes I see my python in those rocks over there. It’s the first I’ve seen in years. There are so many dogs around here and they give the snakes a bad time. They have all gone. But my python is there. And there are a couple of duiker, too. Sometimes they come around at sundown. And you can see them in the early morning grazing. One night I saw them grazing in the moonlight. Two duikers! Do you remember? We might see a dozen duiker in a mile’s walk?’
We stand looking at the pile of rocks where the python lives, but the creature decides to remain out of sight.
Then we walk disconsolately home, while the dogs run around us, coming to put their noses into our hands.
‘Time for a drink,’ he says, back on the verandah. But it is too cold there, and we go in to a big fire. He pours himself an exact measure of brandy, with an exact allowance of water. His mouth is compressed as he watches