African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [67]
What is this thing about whiteness? Yes, this is a naive question, ridiculous…but how was it possible, I marvelled, naively, that the Afrikaans right-wing was ready to risk everything in war for racial supremacy, when they had seen what happened in Kenya, and in Southern Rhodesia?
‘The trouble with you people,’ I say to the Coffee Farmer, ‘is that you have no historical sense whatsoever.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ he says. ‘Anyway, we gave them a jolly good scrap.’
‘But for God’s sake, it was all unnecessary, there need never have been a war, everything could have been settled without that, without all the waste and death and suffering.’
‘But things can always be settled without wars, if people want. So why aren’t they?’
So we argue.
In the mornings I was awakened by a soft, shurring, silken sound, like wind in leaves. The man whose task this was crouched over the coffee beans that were laid out in long rows to dry, on the slope outside the house. They had got damp in the night dews, and needed to be stirred and turned. Shrrrr, shrrrr, shrrrr…he crouched there, his hand turning and turning the beans with a movement not unlike that used for turning curds that will be cheese. Sometimes there were two, or three of them. I listened to the low soft sound of African talk, African laughter. What are they talking about? I ask Milos. ‘They are talking about the Comrades,’ was the usual reply–meaning the battalion stationed a couple of miles away. ‘They just want the Comrades to go away.’
But it was not always the Comrades. I stood with the Coffee Farmer watching a crowd of women and half-grown children, the casual labourers–the Grey Area–loading bags of coffee on to a lorry. ‘What are they singing?’ I ask. ‘You’ll like this,’ said he. ‘They are singing, Here we are, as usual, working away, while white people stand watching us. But never mind, quite soon it will be Saturday and we’ll have a party and get drunk.’
In the living-room where the great fire burned it seemed there were parties most evenings. ‘Milos! Bring beer. Milos, bring coffee, Milos…’
‘He’s a good old chap. When you’ve gone I’ll send him off for a couple of weeks and he can go to his village and get drunk day and night if he wants. Well out of sight of his wife. She gives him a bad time.’
‘Do you realize how hard that man works?’
‘Of course he works hard. So do I. Anyway, he keeps an army of friends and relations in that house of his back there.’
‘House, you call it.’
‘It would be perfectly adequate for him and his wife and children. Anyway, if I paid them any more I’d go bankrupt. Well, that’s what this government wants I suppose.’
‘That hasn’t changed, at least–farmers saying they are going bankrupt. Of course this government doesn’t want that. You’re here to earn foreign currency.’
‘Then why doesn’t it pay us what it owes us? They’ll put off paying us for months. You’ve got to go down on your knees and beg for the money. They keep it to the last possible second because it’s earning interest. Anyway, they’re incompetent.’
‘Of course they are. You didn’t give them training for real responsibility and now you are paying for it.’
And now, a silence, because we do not want to begin, again, the real argument. Instead I make a detour. ‘Your trouble is that you people are unkind. Heartless. I wonder what it must have been like living under this cold angry disapproval. What it must still be like, for that matter. Bossy. Cold. Unkind.’
‘I only disapprove of them when they deserve it. I respect them when they deserve it.’
‘You mean, you respect them for qualities you think of as white qualities.’
‘If you like.’
So we argue.
Some years ago a book came out called Operation Rhino. It described how threatened rhinoceroses were transported by lorry and by air to new habitats. The author wrote about these beasts with the tenderest solicitude, with imaginative sympathy. Helping him in his task were dozens