by Bessie Head
Makhaya walked into the farm yard just as the cattlemen were rising from their discussion with Gilbert. They looked at Makhaya curiously with his strange, strongly marked facial bone structure. They had yet to learn from their wives about the tobacco project and the dams that were being built to trap some of the storm water, but on this evening there was no time for introduction to the stranger. The sight and sound of their cattle crashing dead on the ground were still full in the men’s eyes, and they walked away with the heavy tread of people who were grieved beyond consolation. Makhaya turned and looked at his friend Gilbert and started in surprise. He knew Gilbert so well by now that he could judge his every mood, and on this evening he was in a mood of high elation, even though he kept his face quite serious and listened attentively to Dinorego, who was summing up the situation for him.
Dinorego was saying, “We can progress too, even though we are uneducated men. The mind of an uneducated man works like this: he is a listener and a believer. Most of all he is a believer. The uneducated man has been condemned for many years by the authorities. They came to us and said, ‘We have found new grazing land in the west. Move the cattle over because the eastern side has no more grazing left.’ Yet no one moved. The west is lion country. Some time ago people were eaten by lions and that is enough. This is a belief in our minds that we will be eaten by lions therefore we cannot go west. Today, once all the cattle have died, the authorities will say, ‘You see, we told you.’ But it is strange to me that they did not create the belief that the uneducated man could shoot the lions.”
He paused and looked at the two men with his shrewd, twinkling eyes and both men burst out laughing. It was only a pity that Dinorego was not the Prime Minister of Botswana, as no one could defeat his reasoning power or his faith in progress. He also liked an audience and spread out his hands appreciatively and continued:
“Nearly every agriculture man knows about the progress of the uneducated man. They are always coming to us saying, ‘Look, I can show you how to plough eighty morgan of sorghum.’ Once he has produced a field of eighty morgan, the uneducated man will be consumed by jealousy and try to do the same. What he sees, he believes. But he never questions a matter like an educated man. The miracle must be placed before his eyes, then he will try to perform a miracle too.”
Gilbert looked at the old man intently, the blue flame of elation dancing brightly in his eyes. “What would you say if I said that the deaths of all these cattle, in Golema Mmidi, are a miracle? What would you say if I said I was hoping it would happen?” he asked.
The old man kept deadly silent as he suspected a trap in these unexpected words of Gilbert, and Makhaya leaned forward with interest as he was now about to hear the reason for the suppressed excitement of his friend. Gilbert raised his hands like a gambler who foresees only the gains that will come without any losses. He had three years of research and experiments behind him, but the cattle population of Golema Mmidi had been too huge and unwieldly for his plans. For planned and scientific production of high-grade beef, he needed a drastically reduced herd. He also needed the men near the food growing areas where beef production and food production could be combined. He had everything on hand too, the latest developments in fodder crops for cattle feed and silage making and his own experiments with the natural grasses of Botswana and imported grass seed.
To the cattlemen he had merely presented the government’s emergency plans for dealing with the situation, and these were that there was to be an accelerated slaughter of emaciated beasts at the abattoir. These emaciated beasts would be boiled down into corned beef. This slaughter of cattle would bring in about ten pounds per cow for each man, which was better than nothing at all, and it was designed to relieve the situation until free emergency rations would arrive in about one months’ time. Thus each man would contribute so many head of cattle from his herd, and those that were left would be kept alive for one month on the fodder in the farm’s silage pits. The men had agreed to this arrangement. They had also agreed to retain within the co-operative a certain sum of the money they received for the wholesale slaughter of cattle. This would act as an incentive to the cattlemen to recoup from their losses and restock their herds. He also told the men that since they had an organized cattle co-operative in the village the government had already agreed to drill a free borehole, whose equipment and management would in future be taken over by the co-operative.
This was all he had told them, but to Makhaya and Dinorego, on whom he depended for the fulfilment of his dreams, he allowed his mind to leap ahead to three years from that date when all the thick forests of thornbush that surrounded Golema Mmidi had given way to acres and acres of cultivated fields on which crops grew, under irrigation, the year round. Golema Mmidi would have about ten to twelve boreholes and reservoirs by that time and as many more big dams to hold back every drop of storm water. And he willed his two companions to see it, how Golema Mmidi would supply the whole country with the fresh fruit and vegetables it lacked, and apart from bringing in the highest profits for the best grade beef, it would also create the first industries in the country. Why, he had already picked up a cigarette manufacturer and made him sign a contract to buy tobacco grown by the Golema Mmidi tobacco growing co-operative, and this manufacturer was already building a factory in northern Botswana.
“People have said to me, ‘Oh, forget farming in this dry country,’” he said intensely. “I’ve kept my mouth shut all these years, but my eyes have taught me that Botswana is a farmer’s heaven. It’s better than countries with a high rainfall. Farming under irrigation is controlled and predictable farming. Also, the long dry season is more suited to crops like potatoes and tobacco, which need well-drained soil. We’ve a minimum of crop destroying pests to deal with too, and the soil is rich and fertile.”
He looked at Makhaya with his eyes full of dreams, because Makhaya had proved himself the magician who could make tobacco co-operatives appear overnight. He wanted Golema Mmidi to be co-operative in everything as that was the only way of defeating the land tenure system in the tribal reserves and the only way of defeating subsistence agriculture which was geared to keeping the poor man poor until eternity. Makhaya smiled back quietly and affectionately at his friend. He liked this kind of talk. He liked the idea that the whole of Golema Mmidi would be full of future millionaires. It blended in with his own dreams about Africa because he could not see it other than as a continent of future millionaires, which would compensate for all the centuries of browbeating, hatred, humiliation, and worldwide derision that had been directed to the person of the African man. And communal systems of development which imposed co-operation and sharing of wealth were much better than the dog-eat-dog policies, take-over bids, and grab-what-you-can of big finance. Therefore, in Makhaya’s mind, the poverty and tribalism of Africa were a blessing if people could develop sharing everything with each other.
“I like everything you say, Gilbert,” he said with deep feeling. They looked at the old man, who always had the last word on everything. But Dinorego kept silent. He was regretting that the world had decided to improve itself only when he had become such an old man with a few years left to live. Now, each time he decided he would rest in peace, he kept on learning more about life, and he was not feeling so contented about dying.
“I’m going to the cattle post tomorrow,” Makhaya said, breaking the silence.
Gilbert and the old man looked at him in surprise. These were the familiar words of a Batswana man, but they sounded strange on Makhaya’s lips.
Makhaya wanted to laugh out loud at their surprise. He felt no desire whatsoever to own these huge beasts. They would be an intolerable encumbrance to him. Hesitantly, he explained that he had promised Paulina he would accompany her to her cattle post to see if everything was all right with her son.
“The boy may be ill,” he said. “She expected him to come home with someone named Rankoane whose cattle post is near hers, but he says the boy should have arrived home two weeks ago
. Rankoane says the wells have dried up.”
It chilled Gilbert to hear this and he felt a sharp stab of pain at the way he had light-heartedly talked of scientific beef production amidst all this tragedy.
“Mack, you know it’s a whole day’s walk to the cattle posts,” he said. “The three of us will leave first thing in the morning with the Land-Rover. I also want to see for myself what is happening in the bush.”
He looked across at Makhaya with all the elation gone out of his eyes. His mind had jumped too far ahead into the future, but the present was painful and terrible.
“I hope the boy is only ill,” he said. “He may be dead.”
Makhaya said nothing, yet once Maria came out of the hut and called the three men to eat, his stomach was just tight, painful knots and he excused himself and walked away to his hut. He lay down for some time in his hut, in the darkness, with a strange sensation of having no thoughts in his head, only to discover, with an explosive shock, that he had been talking to himself all the time. He had no idea of what he had been saying to himself because it was an incoherent expression of the concentration of pain inside him. What sort of man was he who only gave way to love under extreme pressure and pain? Perhaps, he had read somewhere, men and women just loved each other without reason or purpose, but he did not belong to this world, not when everything inside him was in revolt. If he loved Paulina now and admitted it to himself, it was because he sensed that she might be facing tragedy, and that she could not face it alone. He swung his legs off the bed, stood up, and walked out of the dark farm to the home of Paulina Sebeso. There was complete darkness in her yard as she was already in bed. He knocked on the door of the hut she used as a bedroom.
“Who is it?” she asked, as she was not yet asleep.
“Makhaya,” he said, quietly.
She was silent awhile, then jumped out of bed and unlocked the door. He could not even see her face in this pitch dark night, and there was still this struggle within his aloof self, so uncertain was he of life.
“Gilbert will also be coming to the cattle post tomorrow,” he said, oddly, excusing himself because he was about to invade her life through his fear of tomorrow.
She still kept silent, half-wanting to laugh and half-wanting to cry. Then she closed her eyes to add to the darkness, because nothing that you said seemed quite so bad when everything was dark.
“Makhaya,” she said softly. “You mustn’t think I’m a cheap woman, but I love you.”
“Why cheap?” he said, amused. “There are no cheap women. Even those you buy love you, while we men rarely do. Perhaps I’ll find out what love is like as we go along together.”
Makhaya was thankful, too, for the dark as he entered her hut. For so long there was this grey graveyard in which he had lived. And who could tell what ghosts really do when they come alive in the dark night?
Eleven
It was just as though everything was about to die. The small brown birds had deserted the bush, and the bush itself no longer supplied the coverage and protection for the secret activities of the scarlet and golden birds. Here and there, faint patches of green clung to the topmost branches of tall thorn trees, but not a green thing survived near the sun-baked earth. The sky had lost that dense blue look of the winter days and spread itself out into a whitish film, through which the sun poured out molten heat in pulsating waves from dawn to dusk. In this desolation the vultures reigned supreme. They gathered on the ground in huge flocks of sixty to a hundred and held important discussions in hoarse, rough voices and flapped their long, sloppy brown feathers in imperious indignation. They could afford to be imperious, indignant and important, for they were to be a burial society for over six hundred thousand cattle. They were amazed and wondering if they would manage it all or if they should send messages to fellow brethren in Africa and India. But whatever their deliberations, they were fearless and proud, for these mean, fierce birds knew that they were always the last visitors on a stricken part of the earth.
Barely three miles away from the village of Golema Mmidi the impact of all this struck the small party that had left for the cattle post early in the morning. During the night, a cow that had belonged to one of the cattlemen had lain down to calve and died in the process. A jackal had hovered near her the whole night and at dawn set himself to devour the newborn calf. The approach of the Land-Rover disturbed him and he arose and slunk away into the bush. Gilbert slowed down the vehicle near the cow and his exclamation – “Oh, this is terrible!” – hardly conveyed the deep sense of shock Makhaya felt. From that day Makhaya was to become peculiarly Motswana in his outlook. Coming from a country of green hills and fresh bubbling streams, he was from that day to treasure every green shoot that sprang up in this dry place, and he would fear to waste even a drop of water. Paulina was the only one who was not deeply perturbed by what she saw. She had lived through times like this before, when the bush was bare and the ploughing season delayed indefinitely. To her, it even seemed like an unreal and lovely spring morning when life was just beginning anew again instead of dying, and her feelings relived over and over again a whole night’s dream.
He just sat there beside her looking as cool and aloof and unchanged as yesterday, while nothing of her own life was left to her, as though she had become an appendage of his body like an arm or a leg. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling as no secure promises had been made. On the other hand, a woman distrusted extravagant promises and, on the other, lived in fear of the silence of a reserved man who only expressed himself in deeds. Maybe women invented marriage, as their imaginations had invented most other things in man’s social life. They can’t help saying, “Are you my property? I must own you.” And now Paulina busied her mind with these things while the sky and the bush exploded into a hot, white glare of heat.
Gilbert turned round and half-smiled at all the dreams in the woman’s eyes.
“Am I still going in the right direction, Paul?” he asked. “The bush is so changed, I can’t make out a thing.”
That is, if he ever had. Like the Tswana language, the bush belonged to all the Batswana people, who had created its footpaths and mapped out its length and breadth in this minds. It had often amazed him to discover that cattlemen drove their cattle home, through the bush, in pitch darkness, with an unerring sense of direction, while he, Gilbert, had several times lost his direction within the fenced farm lands, and his legs and arms bore lots of scars from having pitched himself into a barbed-wire fence at night. But Paulina had footed it this way every three or four months to take her son his food rations and see if all was well with him at the cattle post, and not so long ago, the call of birds had filled these empty spaces. They were always after something, these lovely birds, and she had always kept corn seed in the pocket of her skirt to scatter along the pathway. Now, the vultures, full and gorged, adorned the bare trees, and beneath their resting places lay the white, picked bones of the dead cattle. Those in the trees stared arrogantly at the passing vehicle, and those on the ground merely waddled out of the way. They were the kings of the bush and would remain so throughout this long year of no rain and no crops.
They passed a few empty drinking pools in the bush, and around these were scattered the carcasses of the tiny wild buck. Hundreds had gathered at their favourite drinking places, because about this time every year storm clouds brooded on the horizon and the rain fell down in blinding sheets of water and the scene changed overnight into carpets of fine green grass and splashes of purple and yellow flowers and the drinking pools filled up with sky blue water. The memory of all this drove them to their drinking pools, where they died. The cattlemen had a similar memory. Towards the end of the long dry season they too left their watering places along the river beds, and moved with their cattle into the bush where the grass grew in tangled confusion under the trees, and watered their cattle in the drinking pools of the wild buck. A few of the cattlemen, expecting rain at any time, had deviated towards these water pools on the journey homeward, only to
have their huge herds fall down there and die. It happened over and over in Botswana that year.
Long before they reached Paulina’s cattle post they saw the vultures circling above it in the sky. This marked it out right away as one of the death points. Once they drew close, they could see that not a living thing moved on the ground. All those eighty cattle lay scattered about, quite still, quite dead. It was like a final statement of all the terrible story of the bush. But there was still hope in the heart of the mother. She somehow expected her son to creep out of the lone and solitary hut, and she knew already how she would comfort him and dismiss all this as being of no account. So no one moved once Gilbert had stopped the car some twenty yards from the hut, and each person sat silently absorbing the desolate scene until the vultures began swooping down in a straight column on the already decomposing carcasses. This jerked the woman into action and she scrambled out of the car and raced towards the hut. But Makhaya reached the door before her and pulled her back and looked at her briefly with an angry expression. What was inside there was only for him to see. He pushed open the door and looked in. There was only a heap of clean, white bones lying on the floor. They lay in a curled, cramped position with the bones of the hands curved inward. The white ants and maggots had vied with each other to clear all the flesh off the little boy. And Makhaya stood there so silent and still, absorbing this terrible sight, confused and angry that there was only this dead, unanswering silence in his heart, as though he had only expected to see such sights. Paulina touched him on the back, and he swung around sharply with an expression of hurt surprise on his face.