Going Home - Doris May Lessing [23]
Again, just as America is permeated with the values and attributes of the two groups of people supposedly non-assimilable—the Negroes and the Jews—so the white people here who think of nothing else, talk of nothing else, but the qualities they ascribe to the Africans are inevitably absorbing those qualities.
It is a society without roots—is that why it has no resistance to Americanism? Or is being rootless in itself American?
The myths of this society are not European. They are of the frontiersman and the lone-wolf; the brave white woman homemaking in lonely and primitive conditions; the child who gets himself an education and so a status beyond his parents; the simple and brave savage defeated after gallant fighting on both sides; the childlike and lovable servant; the devoted welfare-worker spending his or her life uplifting backward peoples.
Yet these images have no longer anything to do with what is going on now in Central Africa.
On that first morning I went shopping to try to get the feel and atmosphere of the place.
First into a vegetable shop. Shopping has certainly changed: now the counters are refrigerated, self-service shops everywhere, and above all Coca-Cola has moved in. The Coca-Cola sign is on every second building, from the high new blocks of offices and flats to the scruffy little store in the Native Reserve.
In the vegetable shop were three white people and two Africans. Two of the white people were serving behind the counter; then two African men, with shopping baskets. Then me. I waited my turn behind the two Africans to see what would happen. The woman behind the counter eyed the Africans coldly, and then in the cool, curt voice I know so well said: ‘Can’t you see the white missus, boy? Get to the back.’ They moved back, I moved in and was served. Another white woman came in; she was being served as I went out. The Africans patiently waited.
And for the thousandth time I tried to put myself in the place of people who are subjected to this treatment every day of their lives. But I can’t imagine it: the isolated incident, yes; but not the cumulative effect, year after year, every time an African meets a white person, the special tone of voice, the gesture of impatience, the contempt.
In the next shop, which was a bakery, a young girl in jeans, striped sweat-shirt and sandals, was greeted by a boy in sweatshirt and jeans. ‘Hiya, Babe!’ ‘Hiya, Johnny.’ ‘See you tonight?’ ‘Ya, see you at the flicks.’ ‘Bye.’ ‘Bye.’
The main street is crammed with cars, with white women drifting along, talking, or standing in groups, talking. They wear cool, light dresses, showing brown bare arms and legs. The dresses are mostly home-made, and have that look of careful individual fit that one sees in the clothes of women in Italy and Spain.
These are the women of leisure; and, having been one of them for so long—or at least expected to play the role of one—I know that their preoccupations are in this order: the dress they are making for themselves or their daughter, the laziness of their servants, and an infinite number of personal problems. Or, as the Americans would say, Problems.
Their husbands are now busily engaged in getting on and doing well for themselves in the offices; and their children are at school. The cookboy is cooking the lunch. They will take back the car laden with groceries and liquor, dress-lengths, bargains. Then there will be a morning tea-party. Then lunch with husband and family. Then a nap. Then afternoon tea, and soon, sundowners. Then the pictures. And then, bed. And, in the words of a personal servant of a friend of mine: ‘The white man goes to bed, he makes love, twice-a-week, bump, bump, go-to-sleep.’
Though this did not occur to me until later, at the end of my trip, when my mind had cleared of the fogs induced by the word Partnership, is it possible that the white men of Central Africa are so anxious to create a class of African in their own image, equally preoccupied with getting on and doing