by Bessie Head
“You must approach my friend Mma-Millipede,” Dinorego said at last. “She will enjoy your conversation. She may also help you to find the woman you seek, as she knows the heart of everyone.”
Two women came up and handed the men plates of roast chicken, with rice and potatoes, which they carried on a tray. Then they moved over to Mma-Millipede, Gilbert and Maria and also served them. Gilbert took his plate and set it down on the ground before him. Just at that moment he had an urgent matter to discuss with Mma-Millipede and the food could wait. He looked at Mma-Millipede anxiously. Would she be able to help him? he asked.
Mma-Millipede turned her face towards Gilbert and smiled. She adored him, as she identified him with her own love of mankind.
“You know there is nothing I would not do for you, my son,” she said.
But at the same time she calmly started eating and pointed at his plate, indicating that he should do the same. “If you don’t eat,” she explained, “the ants will soon invade your plate.”
Thus Gilbert was forced to delay his urgent proposal. Mma-Millipede in the meantime noticed the predicament of her friend, Paulina Sebeso, who seemed to have her big, dark eyes glued on the face of Makhaya, and so intent was she on staring that she seemed to have forgotten herself completely. Mma-Millipede felt acute distress.
My friend is going to make a fool of herself over the man, she thought.
Over the years, Mma-Millipede had traced two distinct relationships women had with men in her country. The one was a purely physical relationship. It caused no mental breakdown and was free and casual, each woman having six or seven lovers, including a husband as well. The other was more serious and more rare. It could lead to mental breakdown and suicide on the part of the woman, because, on the one hand, it assumed that the man was worthy of adoration, while in reality he was full of shocks and disappointments; and on the other, this adoration assumed the proportions of a daily diet of a most dangerous nature. Since Mma-Millipede had to sew the funeral garments, she had come to dread this latter type of relationship and gave preference, against her conscience, to the former. Surely, she reasoned, it was far better to have a country of promiscuous women than a country of dead women? Mma-Millipede looked over at Makhaya. No matter how hard she tried, she could not form a judgment on his character because of her inhibition about foreign men. She sighed deeply.
She put her plate down, momentarily debating ways in which she could question Gilbert about Makhaya’s character. These questions would have to be very subtle and not reveal her real interest, which was to protect and advise her friend, Paulina Sebeso. At the same time Gilbert also put down his plate and turned towards Mma-Millipede.
The problem was this, Gilbert explained. He wanted the women of the village, first and foremost, to start producing cash crops which would be marketed co-operatively through the farm. The idea was to get capital in hand which would open up the way for purchasing fertilizers, seed and the equipment necessary to increase food production in Golema Mmidi. Once people had enough to eat, other problems like better housing, water supplies and good education for the children could be tackled. Now, said Gilbert, one of the easiest and most profitable cash crops to grow was Turkish tobacco. If each woman cultivated a small plot of Turkish tobacco, harvested and cured it herself, and if it were all marketed co-operatively, the profits could then be spread out to good purpose. Could Mma-Millipede persuade the women to attend lessons at the farm on how to cultivate Turkish tobacco and how to build a curing and drying shed?
Mma-Millipede nodded her head vigorously. Like Gilbert, she had vision and she clearly saw the wondrous benefits that would accrue to the people of Golema Mmidi.
“Are you going to give the women instruction, my son?” she asked.
“No, not me, but Makhaya,” he said. “I’ve specially asked him to accept responsibility for this side of the work. The farm itself takes up all my time, Mma-Millipede, but I’m anxious that it should not progress beyond the living conditions of the people of Golema Mmidi. Both have to grow together. I chose Makhaya for this side of the work because I think he will enjoy imparting knowledge to people.”
Mma-Millipede sat rigidly silent on receiving this news, yet her mind began to work at a rapid and alert pace. The only woman who would have the courage to persuade the other women to attend lessons at the farm was Paulina Sebeso, and having to approach Makhaya at a closer level, in the company of other women, might help her friend to put this sudden adoration on a sounder basis. But Mma-Millipede still needed a little information in order to be able to advise her friend on how she should conduct herself without coming to grief.
“Is Makhaya a man of good character?” she asked innocently.
Gilbert stared at her in surprise. Why, all his future plans depended on Makhaya. Not only that, he had had no way of starting the plan of this new venture until Makhaya had arrived. He had no way of explaining to Mma-Millipede the real subtleties of his relationship with Makhaya, that he was someone he now leaned on heavily for courage to push ahead with his ideas. Gilbert had long known that his survival in Golema Mmidi depended on many complicated factors, one of these being Chief Sekoto. It did not take him long to find out that Chief Sekoto did not care deeply about development projects and that he, Gilbert, was the medium through which Chief Sekoto inflicted revenge on his brother Matenge. Gilbert had been fearful of being critical about the African way of life, which seemed to him a deadly, chilling society which kept out anything new and strange. It was as though people looked at each other all the time, questioning themselves: Am I exactly the same as my neighbour? The fear was to differ from the next man, and he could see it in so many little ways, even in Golema Mmidi – the way a great scientific discovery like the drought-resistant millet meant nothing against traditional prejudice. Would the superior Motswana turn overnight into a Kalahari bushman if he ate millet? He seemed to think so, irrespective of the fact that millet was just an innocent food which an ‘inferior’ tribe had developed a liking for. This damned millet, even though fields and fields of it could be grown in this country. Of course, he had Dinorego, who copied him in everything, but once Makhaya had come to the village a lot of his silent tortures had blown away in the wind. It mattered very much to Gilbert to have as a friend a man who looked as black as everyone else and yet was not at all a part of these chilling group attitudes. And there was more to Makhaya’s personality than that – a gentleness that communicated itself as a strength and gave peace to others, a complete lack of fear, and a background of persecution which made it so easy for him to identify himself with the rags and tatters of the poor. But there was more still, there was more, and he bent his head searching around for some coherent explanation of his liking for Makhaya. He grasped the first thought that flashed across his mind:
“Makhaya is one of the most truthful men on earth,” he said. “You can depend on him. Besides, he is a real friend to me.”
Mma-Millipede was very moved by this declaration. “Gilbert,” she said, seriously, “I think I accept your word. Tomorrow I’ll send a friend to the farm who will discuss the matter with you. I think she will also bring along her friends. Excuse me, I shall approach her right away.”
Mma-Millipede arose and walked slowly in the direction of Paulina Sebeso. It was most urgent to her future schemes that she prevent Paulina from staring any longer at Makhaya like a felled ox. But Mma-Millipede’s sudden rising had left Maria without her shelter, and all at once she looked like a fragile wild flower, about to be blown away in the wind. Gilbert turned his head and looked at her, feeling strangely uncertain that he was really married to this changeable, unpredictable woman. There were two women in her – one was soft and meditative and the other was full of ruthless common sense, and these two uncongenial personalities clashed and contradicted each other all the time. He wasn’t ever sure if Maria was in need of his constant protection or whether everyone was really superfluous to this still, midnight world or quiet self-absorption in which
she lived. She was in one of her self-absorbed moods right now. He moved over to Mma-Millipede’s vacant seat, took one of her hands in his, and bent his head teasingly near her face.
“What are you thinking about, Pal?” he asked.
She raised her head and stared at him steadily, and that steady stare always meant fireworks. “Are you going back to England one day?” she asked abruptly.
The edges of his eyes crinkled up in amusement. “We might have to,” he said.
Maria placed her free hand straight out on her knee, indicating she had made a rule from which she was not going to budge. “You will have to go back to England by yourself,” she said, flatly, “I shall not live in England with you.”
“You mean you don’t love me, Pal?” he asked, pretending despair.
“It’s not that, Gilbert,” she said crisply. “I won’t feel free in England.”
And a lot of funny things occurred to Gilbert all at once. Of late, the Joas Tsepe crowd had been issuing blood-curdling pamphlets about the volunteers in Batswana, calling them the unemployed of Britain who had come here to cheat the Batswana out of jobs. If the Joas Tsepes overthrew the government by force, as they were always threatening to do, he would be frozen out of the country. He had not felt free in England either, at least not in the upper middle class background into which he had been born, where the women all wore pearls, and everyone was nice and polite to everyone, and you could not tell friend from foe behind the polite brittle smiles; and if your mother’s brother bought his wife a mansion, your mother had to have a mansion too or threaten to commit suicide, and then your mother almost did commit suicide a few years after you were born because all the polite women kept on remarking on how you were such a big-boned lad with an ungainly walk and didn’t somehow quite fit.
“You really ought to send the child to dancing school, Elizabeth,” they all said. “It’s sure to correct his walk.”
And this stupid, neurotic mother had sent him to dancing school, and the dancing teacher had sent him home in tears because he had given her a belly punch when she had tried to force him to dance, and since the belly punch had worked on the dancing teacher, he also tried out a few on his mother; and the way it is with neurotic women, she soon invented a number of excuses as to why it was he lived almost the year round in a tent among the trees. The birds had trailed tiny footpaths through the dense-white, dew-wet grass on summer mornings, and the leaden winter skies had looked like great swathes of eternity which were there to stay, forever and forever. But he found out that there was no eternity: only the ever changing pattern of life. And it was from his tent among the trees that he had learned his humility and tenderness, and that this humility was not compatible with the great causes of the world but only with some work done, preferably in a quiet backwater like Golema Mmidi.
Still, from some unknown quarter, Gilbert had acquired a number of conservative ideas about married life – like it was the man who was the boss and who laid down rules.
“You’re not Dinorego’s daughter any more,” he said to Maria, in a quiet threatening voice. “You’re my wife now and you have to do as I say. If I go back to England, you go there too.”
The woman of common sense retreated rapidly before the threat, and the other woman softly contradicted her, “I did not say I won’t obey you, Gilbert. I only wanted to find out what was on your mind.”
But thoughts of home, of England, had struck Gilbert with a sudden, deep loneliness. The feel of the still, blue, Botswana winter day had the same feel of the February days in England when the snowdrops came out. He stood up and pulled Maria by the hand, and together they walked away far into the bush where the scarlet and gold birds talked to each other in low, soft tones.
Eight
Paulina Sebeso awoke early the next morning. She was in a slightly unbalanced mood, and the clear, sparkling light of the heady winter morning added to her intoxication. On the previous day at the wedding party Mma-Millipede had told her certain things that had made her heart drunk with joy. She had had to struggle to concentrate on the details of the tobacco growing project, and Mma-Millipede, noticing this, had added a number of stern warnings: You must above all control yourself, my friend. You must pretend you are interested in the tobacco and give yourself time to study the man. Foreign men need studying, even though I accept Gilbert’s word that he is a good man.
Not long after Paulina had lit her small outdoor fire to make tea and heat washing water, ten other women walked briskly into the yard. Twenty more had been willing to join the tobacco growing project, but they first had to get the permission of their husbands. The ten women who joined Paulina were agog with excitement. They seated themselves around the jutting mud foundation of one of Paulina’s huts and ragged her about not having washed yet, nor made tea.
“Goodness! The tobacco won’t run away,” Paulina said gaily, and she splashed some water into a basin.
It was always like this. Any little thing was an adventure. They were capable of pitching themselves into the hardest, most sustained labour with perhaps the same joy that society women in other parts of the world experience when they organize fêtes or tea parties. No men ever worked harder than Botswana women, for the whole burden of providing food for big families rested with them. It was their sticks that thrashed the corn at harvesting time and their winnowing baskets that filled the air for miles and miles around with the dust of husks, and they often, in addition to broadcasting the seed when the early rains fell, took over the tasks of the men and also ploughed the land with oxen.
As always, when women left their own homes for the day, they took with them their food supplies in the bright checkered cloths, and these they undid now. One of the women stood up and collected small helpings of tea leaves and powdered milk from each bundle, and then both the powdered milk and tea leaves were poured at the same time into the boiling water. By the time Paulina emerged, dressed and washed, with her small daughter, tea was ready and poured. Also a plate of flat, hard sorghum cakes was handed around. Paulina took a few of the cakes off the plate and wrapped them in a cloth and handed this to the child, instructing her, as it was school holidays, to go and spend the day at the home of Mma-Millipede. Then they all drank the tea with clouds of vapour rising up from the mugs into the cold air. Each woman then carefully rinsed her mug and tied it up once again in the checkered cloth. They arose and walked in a brisk, determined group to the farm, Paulina taking the lead as she always and automatically did.
They found the farm yard deserted, but tractors whirred out in the fields as the winter ploughing was still in progress. Maria, however, emerged from one of the huts and waved and smiled. They hardly recognized her. She seemed quite changed, and not one of the women could ever recall when Maria had ever looked anything but pensive. They all fell on her, teasing her mercilessly and talking all at once.
“Hmm, married life changes a person,” they said. “Tell us! How does he kiss? Come on, tell us!”
Maria waited until the uproar had died down, smiling in her secret way all the while. Then she raised one hand.
“You must all wait until Makhaya comes off the land,” she said. “He is taking lessons in tractor ploughing, as this is new to him. He will be here quite soon.”
“Where is the husband?” they asked.
“He’s working in the office,” she said.
The women again, settled themselves around the jutting mud foundation of the hut, and the tea-drinking ritual was once more repeated, amidst much laughter and jokes about married life to discomfort Maria.
They had just tucked away their mugs when Makhaya appeared. He walked to his own hut to remove a blue overall and then approached the women. They all stood up and said, “Good-day, sir,” together. Makhaya paused, looked at them, smiled and said, “Good-morning,” in a friendly, natural voice as though he was long accustomed to receiving people as his guests. Then he said, “Follow me,” and led the way to a part of the yard where a small plot of tobacco had be
en cultivated.
The experimental plot was forty-eight square yards. It had been scaled down to this size by Gilbert, as being the most manageable area for each individual woman to cultivate in her own yard. But one hundred such plots were needed to produce the quantity of tobacco that would be profitable to market, and this also meant that a hundred or more women had to become involved in the project.
The small group of women, including Paulina, at first felt a little inhibited. They were unaccustomed to a man speaking to them as an equal. They stood back awhile, with uneasy expressions, but once it struck them that he paid no attention to them as women, they also forgot he was a man and became absorbed in following his explanations. And this was really part of the magic of Makhaya’s personality. He could make people feel at ease. He could change a whole attitude of mind merely in the way he raised his hand or smiled. But he never exerted himself, seeming to leave it to the other party with whom he was communicating to do all the exerting and changing.
He stood and pointed to the plot on which a foot high of tobacco was already growing. It was growing on a gently sloping mound, and this had been created by building up the soil in a heap, the same as when one constantly pitches ash in one place. The need for this mound was to assist in draining the soil, as well-drained soil was needed for the tobacco. He also broke off a tobacco leaf and explained the very dark blue-green colouring meant that it was an unripe leaf, but once the leaf had matured it changed to a pale, light olive green.