African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [68]
It is said that on Liberation certain villagers went out into the bush and slaughtered large numbers of animals, because concern for them had become associated with white values: care for animals, but indifference to themselves.
THE WOMAN WALKING
UP THE MOUNTAIN
On a drive through some particularly dramatic mountains, this happened: in the car were the Coffee Farmer, The Assistant, and I. We were going up a steep hill. In front walked a young black woman. She was very pregnant, had a baby on her back, held a small child by the hand. She was walking slowly. Understandably. I knew that the two men had literally not seen this woman. Her need was invisible to them.
‘How about giving her a lift?’ My voice was stiff with fury, a build-up from weeks of anger, from years of past anger as a young woman, and the anger due to the moment. I knew we would not be giving her a lift.
‘You know she wouldn’t expect it.’
‘You could establish a precedent, couldn’t you?’
The Assistant can’t believe his ears. He has been told about my funny ideas, like the ideas of those bad people the Swedes, but brought up as he has been, he has never heard any.
Wrangling, we drive slowly up the steep hill past the pregnant woman.
It is The Assistant who is disarming me. I know quite well that if he had to sit beside this black woman and her children he would probably suffer some kind of nervous attack. Yet he couldn’t possibly be a ‘nicer’ person, as we say. I would remember him, I knew, for his quality of puppyish, unformed, decency.
One evening, when a horde of guests had descended, our host had remarked it was a pity all the hams, sausages, and so forth had vanished in the accident.
‘What do you mean, vanished?’ asked The Assistant.
‘They were stolen,’ said the Coffee Farmer.
The Assistant thought. ‘You mean the Affs stole your food?
That’s not right. People shouldn’t steal.’
‘Of course they should have stolen it,’ I said. ‘Probably none of them had ever seen such a cornucopia. We were like a travelling delicatessen.’
He thought, he puzzled. For one thing, he did not know the words cornucopia, delicatessen.
‘Just imagine it,’ I said, ‘what all that food must have seemed like, hams and bacon and sausages scattered all over the road, like a miracle.’
‘But it’s not right to steal,’ he said.
The conversation in the car ended: ‘And anyway, she’s bound to be a Squatter. I’m not giving lifts to Squatters.’
‘I should say not, it wouldn’t be right,’ said The Assistant.
Since then an obvious thought has added itself to those already in my mind which I might have had before: no one was likely to give this woman a lift. Who? Certainly not the new rulers of the country, flashing about in their great cars, their motorcades. Perhaps some local missionary, or a doctor…everywhere in the world this peasant woman, with one (or two) babies inside her, one on her back, one or two clutched by the hand, is slowly walking up a mountain, and we can be sure that few people see her.
INNOCENCE
The innocence of the farm assistant made me think of a certain television programme, towards the end of the Bush War, when it had become evident the ‘Affs’ were going to win. Half a dozen young whites were talking. They were the new type of young white, to be seen in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, different from their elders and from their contemporaries who have elected not to change. They are immediately recognizable by their open and smiling readiness. Charm. They are like friendly children. These were chatting away about the War, in a confiding way, offering to the viewers as an experience we were being privileged to share with