Going Home - Doris May Lessing [55]
‘Thomas, you are the only boy I have ever known who can cut a hedge straight.’
‘That is so, baas.’
‘My hedges need cutting.’
Thomas says with dignity: ‘I will come to you on Sunday afternoon and cut your hedges.’
My friend hesitates. ‘I can do with a good boy, Thomas.’
Thomas says: ‘Ah, baas, but now that the Government is shupaing me, I must be with my wife in the kraal. But because you ask me I will come and cut your hedges next Sunday afternoon.’
And with this he departs.
Going back in the car my friend says, half-admiringly, half-annoyed: ‘Damn the old bastard. It’s all very well, but did you hear that? Mkiwa, Mkiwa—the white man. It used to be Mlungu, which is a term of respect, but now it is just “white man”. All the same, I don’t see how we could have him back really, even though he can cut a hedge. He can do all kinds of work, lay bricks, do metalwork and carpentry. He used to live in the compound with his wife. Then she had a still-born baby, and we had to find her another hut because she said her baby had died of witchcraft. Another baby died, and now she said she could not live on the compound at all, because the evil eye was on her. So she went back to her kraal. So Thomas took to going home every week-end. It’s 50 miles. Then he took to coming back at lunch-time on Mondays, and I didn’t say anything. Then he came back drunk. Then he started smoking dagga. I gave him fair warning. I said to him if he didn’t stop smoking dagga, I’d sack him. But he started coming back Tuesdays or even Wednesdays, drunk or sodden with dagga. So I sacked him. But for all that, he can cut a hedge. He can really work, that boy. Perhaps, if I don’t push him, I can talk him into coming back when he pitches up on Sunday.’
My friend and I have many discussions about the colour bar.
‘The trouble with you,’ he says, ‘is that you’re out of touch with our problems. You don’t understand our problems.’
‘But I was brought up in the same way as you.’
‘But you’ve been out of the country for six years and you’ve lost touch.’
‘But all my childhood these feudal baas-and-boy conversations went on; and I come back, and they are still going on.’
‘The boys I work with, they are the real natives, not those agitators you mix with.’
‘After all that’s happened,’ I said in despair, ‘you can talk about agitators! Any minute you’ll have another Kenya on your hands, and all you farmers will be heroically defending your isolated homesteads and, I may add, feeling very sorry for yourselves.’
‘I do not see,’ said he, after thought, ‘that there is anything heroic about doing your duty. And besides, it won’t happen here.’
‘Partnership will save you from it?’
‘Partnership? Oh, old Todd’s racket. Well, he’s sincere enough I expect, but the boys I work with would not know how to spell Partnership. I wish you’d understand, they’re primitive people.’
At this point a message arrived that one of the men wanted him in the workshop, so together we went to the workshop.
‘Baas,’ says a young man, ‘when you have time I wish to speak to you.’ This is not an old and dignified man like Thomas of yesterday, but a young man with a keen, sharp, intelligent face.
‘Speak.’ My friend settles down on the table, one foot propped on a chair, while the other faces him. It is a palaver.
‘It is a question of that old car you are selling.’
‘Yes?’
‘If you lent me £100 I could buy it.’
‘Why do you want to buy it?’
‘So that I can use it to take my vegetables in to the market.’
‘You earn £6 a month, and when will you pay the £100 back?’
‘From the money I earn from selling my vegetables.’
A silence. ‘And now listen well, for you are being very foolish.’
‘And how is that?’
‘That car is nearly dead. That is why I am selling it.’
‘I can mend that car.’
‘No, you cannot mend a car that is nearly dead.’
‘But, why do you not wish to sell me that car? Who, then, will you sell it to?’
‘I shall sell it to a white man who has the money to mend it.’
‘But