African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [20]
‘And the same to you,’ I say. Humorously.
‘But you aren’t so bad, I suppose. Funny thing, if you don’t see somebody for a long time, you start imagining all kinds of things about them and it’s quite a shock when…but I suppose you do still have those funny ideas about–well, about everything.’
‘You could say that I have my funny ideas. You could say they’ve turned out not to be so funny in the end.’
At this he goes red, he is really angry. This is the moment when we could explode into argument. I say hastily, ‘Today when I came past Marandellas, I remembered how we used to camp out there, near the school.’
He smiles, and nods, meaning, Yes, you’re right, let’s not…And says, ‘Who camped out? When?’
Now I am really astonished, and upset. ‘You don’t remember how we used to come down, and camp? Sometimes for a week or even ten days? When you had Sports Days and things.’
‘Did you?’
‘How can you not remember that? The best times of my childhood…we couldn’t afford the hotel for a night, let alone a week…’
‘Wait a minute, yes, it’s coming back. Yes, you’re right.’
‘And the school always let you come and camp with us for a night or two.’
He rubs his hands over the back of his head, with a quizzical but frustrated look. I remembered the movement: father, brother.
‘We used to cut down branches or young trees and make an enclosure to steep in.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘To keep out the leopards.’
He puts his head back and laughs most heartily. It is a young fresh laugh, from quite another layer of his life. Then, soberly, ‘Shouldn’t have done that. Couldn’t have done the bush much good.’
‘We used to leave a trampled-down place inside the circle of dead branches, and the burned leaves hanging down where the fire was.’
‘But how could we? What did we want to do a thing like that for?’
‘That’s how we all were in those days.’
‘Well, we are all paying for it now.’ Many conversations with my brother end like this: I, we, she, he, they, you, are paying for it. Crime and punishment. Invisible walls have always surrounded my brother, signposted, Forbidden…No…Keep out. Verboten. Me, too, of course, but different walls, different forbidden places.
‘Do you remember how we hated to go to sleep because it was so marvellous sleeping out?’
‘No. But it is marvellous sleeping out. In the Bush War, that was the best thing. Of course I was too old to fight properly, but when we were out on patrol, we often stayed the night in the bush.’
‘Do you remember the old prospectors that used to come to the farm? They lived out in the bush all the time.’
‘Of course I remember. You don’t forget a thing like that. Perhaps that’s what I should have done. I often wonder if I’ve lived my life right. I should have been in the bush.’
‘But you have been in the bush.’
‘No, I mean really. They had a pan for gold, a rifle and a blanket. They lived off the bush.’
‘And most of them died of malaria or blackwater fever.’
‘That’s all right. Who cares about dying? I don’t.’
‘Do you remember many of them weren’t ordinary prospectors? Some were men who had lost their jobs in the Slump, and they put their wives into some job in the town where they could have the children, usually matrons or housekeepers or something, and they went off to live in the bush till things got better.’
‘No. But it makes sense. Good for them.’
‘I’m sure Daddy would have been happy living off the bush. If he hadn’t been so ill all the time. Do you remember how he used to get fed up with socializing at Sports Days and he lay down under the blue gums and looked up at the sky, and Mother was quite frantic, and said he was letting the side down. And you were embarrassed too.’
‘I wasn’t. I couldn’t have been. I always do that in the bush. I lie on my back looking at the sky. After a few minutes the birds and the animals–well, what birds and animals are still left–they forget all about you. You could be a stone or a bush. Once a yellow cobra went past about five feet away. He didn’t care about me.’
‘Do you remember…?’
‘No. And you don’t remember how…?’
‘No.’
‘And you really