African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [60]
The long drive to Mutare in a fog of pain was the start of a psychological process that now seems as interesting as the accident itself. My mind ticked over comfortably as usual, making this or that comment, but ‘my nerves’ (what nerves? where situated?) jumped and suffered, but on a parallel track to my intelligence. Nothing I told them made any difference. It was not fear I was feeling, but the neurological results of shock. It was dark by now, and we could not see the road to Mutare, and that made it all worse. The well-known timidity of old women is because they know what can, and does, happen, but young people do not know, and therefore bounce about half-drunk in cars going at a hundred miles an hour on bad roads, and fearlessly do things their ‘nerves’, still unschooled by experience, will not allow them to do later.
My nerve-sickness continued for weeks. I know–and who does not?–how heart and mind can run on parallel tracks, heart craving what mind forbids, mind’s ordinances derided by the heart, but until this accident I had taken for granted that my physical self did more or less what I wanted. Now I was afraid of heights, to the point I could not stand on a hillside whose worst threat was that I might roll over cushions of grass into a gentle hollow: I came out in a sweat, I was paralysed, if not with fear, then with a generalized inhibition. In a car I could not drive faster than fifty miles an hour: a governor inside me I knew nothing about would not let me. If there is one thing I adore it is being taken up in a small aeroplane: given a ride in one through the mountains of the Vumba, I felt sick and silly. I could not cross a road without sweating, or descend a staircase without clutching the stair rail. My mind observed all this helplessly, and if it tried mockery, that made no difference. Then, one day, in London, I found myself dodging through traffic from one pavement to another, the way we all do, and knew I was cured. The mysterious ailment had lifted: it was not a wearing-off, but a sudden deliverance.
A WHITE LAGER
A large house in Mutare, spread about with rooms and verandahs in a large garden. A welcoming hostess. Children. Young people…a lot of people…We were at once absorbed into kindness and efficiency. A ‘proper’ doctor was summoned. Again we were examined. The X-rays at the country hospital had been misinterpreted, some were inexpert. More X-rays were ordered. The shoulder was very bad…there were cracked ribs…a damaged tendon…a hairline fracture. I might have remarked that it is not unknown for misdiagnoses to be made in the advanced hospitals of Britain. But: ‘Well, what do you expect?’ was in the air, was being said loudly, with the smugness of the righteous. In this house it was essential to prove the Africans wrong as often as possible. For all the years of the War, the house had been a lager, a central point. People from exposed farms came in to stay a night, or several, if ‘terrs’ were reported to be around, or during periods of bad fighting. Women whose husbands were doing a spell with the Security Forces came with their children. The fighters came, between spells of duty, for meals, a bath, a good sleep.
Strong in this house was the atmosphere I was brought up with: in the farmhouses of The District were men and women with unambiguous roles: there was women’s work, and there was men’s work. Coming from London where every house one goes into has a different pattern, a different balance between men and women, this colonial society was a shock. Salutary, I suppose, as a reminder: this is what I and my kind reacted against. Next morning, as we left, one of the men was barking orders at his young woman. He did this because other men were watching: he was proving he knew how to keep a woman in her place.
All the men had fought in the War. People kept whispering, ‘That man, over there, he was the best helicopter pilot in the War.’ Or, ‘He rescued such and such a family from beneath the noses of the ‘terrs’.’ Or, ‘She fought off a ‘terr’ who got inside the security