African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [55]
‘It’s going to take time,’ she says, almost under her breath, glancing around to make sure no one had overheard.
‘It’s going to take time, but Zimbabwe is on the right path.’
‘Very good,’ she says. ‘I like that.’
AT A BAR
That evening I am standing at a bar in a restaurant in a suburb, with some friends. The bar is full. A black man has been told that it is now against the law to forbid a black person from going into a ‘white’ bar or club. He is bobbing about among the white drinkers, smiling ecstatically, a bit drunk perhaps, or elated with the emotions of the time. The whites, as they notice him, not at once since they are pretty drunk, make room for him, and one says, ‘Whoa there, Jim, mind my glass.’ ‘Yes, baas, yes, my baas,’ says the brave one, smiling, bobbing, turning himself right around to make sure he is here, actually here, by right, in this white place. ‘Do you want a drink?’ asks another white, and to the barman: ‘Give this nice chap a drink. What do you want to drink? ‘A beer, baas.’ ‘No, have a whisky, go on, be a devil.’ ‘Yes, baas, a whisky please, baas.’
Next morning, sober, he will be beside himself with rage. ‘I’ll kill them, I’ll kill them,’ he will certainly say, banging his fists against the wall, weeping.
Then our party goes to a table. A Zimbabwean evening. Just like a Southern Rhodesian evening. I sat there, the women sat there, while the men got drunker and drunker. They had long ago passed that alas very short period when drunks are inventively funny, wondrously witty, and had become stupid. How many hundreds of evenings had I, a young woman, sat literally stupefied with boredom, swearing I would leave this country, leave it if it was the last thing I did. ‘I’ve got to get out of here or it’ll do me in…’ Boredom, obliterating boredom…
THE RESTAURANT
This is the Jameson Hotel, which was inter-racial years before Liberation, and has always been a good-natured place. In the restaurant a husband is urging his wife to order food she has never tried. ‘You can’t eat only sadza,’ says he, like a school master. She is a fat woman, laughing helplessly as she points to an item on the menu, then covers her mouth with both palms and sits shaking. The waiter stands smiling, other waiters interrupt their work to watch, the restaurant manager comes over. Everyone, black and white, is involved in this moment of social evolution.
She tastes a cheese dish, wrinkles up her face, shakes her head then shudders with her shoulders, so that a collar of tangled necklaces flash and tinkle. But we can see she is committed on principle to liking only sadza, and we do not have to take the rejection seriously. A waiter removes the cheese dish with a great philosophical shrug. Another dish is set before her. She pokes her finger into it, rolling her eyes. ‘No, no, you must use a fork,’ says her husband, with appropriate severity. She compromises with a spoon, takes up a little edge of whatever it is, lifts it to her lips, makes a big astonished face, purses her mouth, shakes her head, sits back wheezing out laughter and pressing the napkin to her whole face.
By now everybody is laughing.
The waiter sets down a plate of pudding, with a flourish and a last-ditch gesture that involves us all. Her eyes stretched wide, she stands bravely at the precipice edge, she plunges in a spoon, she takes it in slow jerks to her mouth, groaning with apprehension, she encloses the spoon with her lips, she tilts back her head and allows a look of ecstasy to overcome her, she removes the spoon from her mouth, and uses it to eat up her pudding very fast, with little cries of appreciation, while the waiters reel about laughing. ‘My dear,’ says her husband smiling, ‘you are a very foolish woman.’
‘Yes, yes, I am a foolish woman, my dear, but I will have some more of whatever it is. I like it.’
IN A POET’S HOUSE
A house in Harare. A black poet is married to a white woman. French. She has a job in the university, works long hours. He has no job. She is cooking a meal for eight people, and more keep arriving. I ask