African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [70]
In Mutare there were complicated negotiations at the garage, over petrol. The women asked if I was going to Harare, and I said yes. They said they would come with me. There was more than a hint of command in their voices. They directed me to go to a certain hotel where they would tell a relation this and that, who would tell another that and this, and then they must buy some presents for Harare relatives. I sat in the car under a flame tree, and looked at the people walking up and down the slow lazy streets of this always slow-moving town, and wondered if this visit would stop the miles-long Main Street appearing regularly in my dreams as a symbol for difficult journeys.
The women returned, with suitcases, and got into the back seat. Off we went. It was going to be a long drive, because my inner monitor or governor still would not let me drive faster than about fifty miles an hour. I began to sweat and tremble if I did. The women were commenting on my slowness, but I did not want to alarm them by explaining I had been in a car accident. I was understanding a good bit of what they were saying, by intonation. They had decided I was one of the ‘good’ whites, because I was giving them a lift. They asked if I lived on one of the coffee farms and I said, No, I was from England, and this explained everything. We began a real conversation. Their lives were full of difficulties, mostly because between them they had seventeen children. They were sisters. One husband was dead, killed in the War because he was asleep in a hut set on fire by Smith’s men. The other husband had a job in Mutare in the supermarket. Some of the children were in school in Mutare. The smaller children lived with them, the mothers–in other words, up in the mountains, in the Squatters’ huts. There was one son in good work, in a hotel, but the oldest son of one sister had never worked, and he was drinking. The women were worried because two children would end school this year, and where would they get work?
We talked on and off on the long slow drive from Mutare to Harare, and there was an incident interesting enough to remember. I saw a tall very thin young man flailing his arms about to make me stop and give him a lift. I was slowing when both women leaned forward and energetically shook my shoulders, two strong hands commanding me to drive on. First I thought, But it’s like the old man on the mountainside, they want the back seat to themselves, but then they said, ‘He’s a bad man. He’s a skellum from the War. You must not give lifts to bad people.’ I said, ‘But you have to trust people.’ I heard the feebleness of it as it came out of my mouth. Why did I say it? I don’t believe it, but something in their picture of me had brought the foolish words out of me. I have more than once been surprised at myself when other people’s expectations of me make me say things, do things, I like to think are not in character.
The two women were looking full in each other’s faces with wonderful expressions of derision, of amusement. The older leaned forward to give me a lesson. ‘You must look carefully at a person’s face, then you can see if he is good. That one is very bad. The War made many bad people. He would steal your money and our suitcases.’
They had written me off as a fool, and their manner towards me changed. Soon they tapped my shoulder: a roadside stall had come into view. I stopped. They went to the stall, stood talking for a time with the old woman who was selling. To hurry over a transaction like this is not the way of the country. They brought back cans of soft drinks and opened one for me. Then, without asking me, they peeled an orange for me, and as I drove they handed segments over my shoulder, nodding with approval as I put them into my mouth, as if I were one of their children.
In Harare they asked if they could come with me when I went back to