The Sweetest Dream

by Doris Lessing

  The priest’s house, standing in the dust, the raggedy gum trees, the sun marking the nuns’ house and the half dozen roofs of the school on its ridge–so paltry did all this seem, such a shallow incursion on the old landscape–she was back home, yes she felt that–and it could all be blown away by a breath. She stood with the smell of wet earth in her nostrils and a warmth striking up from it on to her legs. Then Rebecca appeared, with the cry of, ‘Sylvia. Oh, Sylvia’, and the two women embraced. ‘Oh, Sylvia I have missed you too much.’ But Sylvia was feeling that what she was embracing matched her feelings of evanescence, impermanence. Rebecca’s body was like the frailest bundle of light bones, and when Sylvia held her away to look into that face, she saw Rebecca’s eyes deep in her head, under the old faded kerchief.

  ‘What’s wrong, Rebecca?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Rebecca, meaning, I shall tell you. But first she took Sylvia’s hand and led her into the house, where she sat her down at the table with herself opposite. ‘My Tenderai is sick.’ No concealment, while the two pairs of eyes searched each other. Two of Rebecca’s children had died, another had been sick for a long time, and now there was Tenderai. The source of the disease was Rebecca’s husband, still apparently in good health, if thin and drinking. By all the rules of probability Rebecca should be HIV positive, but without a test, who could know? And if she were, what could be done? She was not likely to be sleeping around, spreading the fatal thing.

  Sylvia had been away a week.

  ‘Okay,’ said Sylvia, in her turn, using this new, or newish idiom, which now seemed to begin every sentence. She meant that she had absorbed the information and shared Rebecca’s fears. She said, ‘I’ll examine him and see. Perhaps it is just a temporary disease.’

  ‘I hope it is,’ said Rebecca, and then, putting behind her family worries, said, ‘And Father McGuire is working too-too hard.’

  ‘I heard. And what is this business about theft?’

  ‘It is a foolishness. It is about the cases of equipment at the hospital we went to. They are saying you stole them.’

  Now, Sylvia had been thinking, for in London her thoughts had been with the mission, that it was only commonsense to return to the ruinous hospital and take away anything that could be used. But there was something more here, and Rebecca was not coming out with it. She looked away into the air, and her face was tight with embarrassment and the apprehension of trouble.

  ‘Please tell me, Rebecca. What is it?’

  Rebecca still did not look at Sylvia, but said that it was all a big foolishness. There was a spell on the cases–she used the English word, and then added, ‘The n’ganga said bad things would happen to anyone who stole anything from the hospital.’ And now she got up, and said it was time to get Father McGuire’s lunch, and she hoped Sylvia was hungry, because she had cooked some special rice pudding.

  While Rebecca had sat opposite, and in their minds had been Tenderai and the other children, dead and living, between the two women had been an absolute openness and trust. But now Sylvia knew that Rebecca would not tell her more, for on this subject Rebecca knew she would not understand.

  Sylvia sat on her bed surrounded by brick walls, and looked at the Leonardo women, whom she felt were welcoming her home. Then she turned to the crucifix behind her bed, with a deliberate intention of affirming certain ideas that had been growing clamorous in her mind. Someone subscribing to the miracles of the Roman Catholic Church should not accuse others of superstition: this was her train of thought, and it was far from a criticism of the religion. On Sundays the congregations that came to take the Eucharist with Father McGuire were told that they drank the blood and ate the flesh of Christ. She had slowly come to understand how deeply the lives of the black people she lived among were embedded in superstition, and what she wanted was to understand it all, not to make what she thought of as ‘clever intellectual remarks’. Of the kind Colin and Andrew would make, she told herself. But the fact remained: there was an area where she, Sylvia, could not go, and must not criticise, in Rebecca just as much as any black casual worker, although Rebecca was her good friend.

  She would have to go over to the Pynes, if Father McGuire would not help. At lunch she brought the subject up, while Rebecca stood by the sideboard listening, and adding when the priest appealed to her for confirmation, ‘Okay. It is true. And now the people who took the things are falling ill and people are saying it is because of what the n’ganga said.’

  Father McGuire did not look well. He was yellow and the hectic patches on his broad Irish cheekbones flared. He was impatient and cross. This was the second time in five years he was having to teach twice his normal hours. And the school was falling apart and Mr Mandizi only repeated that he had informed Senga of the situation. The priest went back to the school without taking his usual nap, and Sylvia and Rebecca unpacked the books, and made shelves from planks and bricks and soon all of one wall, on either side of the little dressing-table, was covered with books. Rebecca had wept to hear the sewing machines had been impounded–she had hoped to make a little extra money sewing on hers, but her tears when looking at and touching the books were from joy. She even kissed the books. ‘Oh, Sylvia, it was so wonderful you thought of us and brought us the books.’

  Sylvia went down to the hospital, where Joshua sat dozing under his tree, as if he had not left it in her absence, and where the little boys clamorously welcomed her, and she attended to her patients, many because of the coughs and colds that come with the sudden changes of temperature at the start of the rains. Then she took the car and went over to the Pynes, who filled a precise place in her life: when she needed information, that is where she went.

  The Pynes had bought their farm, after the Second World War, in the Fifties, on that late wave of white immigration. They grew mostly tobacco and had been successful. The house was on a ridge, looking out over to tall tumbling hills that in the dry season were blue with smoke and haze, but now were sharply green–the foliage; and grey–granite boulders. The pillared verandah was wide enough to have parties on, and before Liberation parties had been many, but were few now, with so many of the whites gone. The floor was polished red, and on it were scattered low tables and dogs and some cats. Cedric Pyne sat gulping tea, while he stroked the head of his favourite dog, a ridgeback bitch called Lusaka. Edna Pyne, smart in her slacks and shirt, her skin glistening with sun-creams, sat by the tea tray, her dog, Lusaka’s sister Sheba, as close as she could get by her chair. She listened to her husband holding forth about the deficiencies of the black government. Sylvia drank tea and listened too.

  If she had had to hear Sister Molly out on the subject of the Pope and his inveterate maleness; had had to listen every day to Father McGuire saying he was an old man and he was no longer up to it, he was going back to Ireland; if she had had to listen to Colin lament his situation with Sophie, now she had to bide her time again before she could introduce her own concerns.

  The bones of the situation–the white farmers–were easy to understand. They were the main targets of the blacks’ hate, were heaped with abuse every time the Leader opened his mouth, but they earned the foreign currency which kept the country going, mainly to pay the interest on loans insisted on by . . . in her mind’s eye Sylvia saw Andrew, a smiling debonair fellow holding out a large cheque with lines of noughts on it, while accepting with the other hand another cheque with an equal number of noughts. This was the visual shorthand she had devised to explain the machinery of Global Money to Rebecca, who had giggled, sighed and said ‘Okay.’

  Because of the Leader’s socialism, acquired late in life with all the force of a conversion, various policies he believed essential to Marxism had acquired the force of commandments. One was that no worker could be sacked, and that meant that every employer carried a dead weight of workers who, knowing they were safe, drank, did not work, lay about in the sun and stole everything–just like their betters. This was one item on the litany of complaints that Sylvia had heard so often. Another
was that they could not buy spare parts for machines which broke down, and it was impossible to buy new machines. Those that were imported went straight to the Ministers and their families. These complaints, the most frequent, were of less importance than the main one, which like so many main, crucial, basic facts, was seldom mentioned simply because it was too obviously important to need saying. Because the white farmers were continually threatened with being thrown out and their farms taken, they had no security, did not know whether to invest or not, lived from one month to the next in doubt. Now Edna Pyne broke in and said she was fed up, she wanted to leave. ‘Let them get on with it and they’ll know then just what they’ve lost when we go.’

  This farm, bought as virgin acres without so much as a cleared field on it, let alone this big house, was now equipped with every kind of farm building–barns, sheds, paddocks, wells, boreholes and, a recent development, a large dam. All their capital was in it. They had had none when they came.

  Cedric said to his wife in a sharp rebuke that Sylvia had heard before, ‘I’m not giving up. They’re going to have to come and throw me off.’

  Now Edna’s plaint began. Since Liberation it had been hard to buy even basics, like decent coffee or a tin of fish. ‘They’ could not even keep a decent supply of mealiemeal coming for the workers, she had to keep a storeroom filled to the roof with meal for the next time when the labour force came up to beg for food. She was sick of being reviled. They–the Pynes–were paying school fees for twelve black children now, but none of those government black bastards ever gave the farmers credit for anything. They were all hot air and incompetence, they were inefficient and only cared about how much they could grab for themselves, she was fed up with . . .

  Her husband knew she had to have her say out, just as she knew that he did, whenever a fresh face appeared on that verandah, and he sat in silence, looking out over the tobacco fields–in full green–to where the rainy season’s clouds were building for what looked would be an afternoon storm.

  ‘You’re mad, Cedric,’ said his wife direct to him, an evident continuation of many a private altercation. ‘We should cut our losses and go to Australia like the Freemans and the Butlers.’

  ‘We aren’t as young as we were,’ said Cedric. ‘You always forget that.’

  But she was going on. ‘And the nonsense we have to put up with. The cook’s wife is sick because she has had the evil eye put on her. She’s got malaria because she doesn’t like taking her pills. I tell them, I keep telling them, if you don’t take the malaria pills then you’ll get sick. But I’ll tell you something. That n’ganga of theirs has got more to say about what goes on in this district than any government official has.’

  Sylvia interposed herself into this gushing stream: ‘That’s what I want to ask you. I need your advice.’

  At once two pairs of blue eyes attended to her: giving advice, that was what they knew they were equipped to do. Sylvia outlined the story. ‘And so now I am a thief. And what is this spell that was put on the new hospital?’

  Edna allowed herself a weak, angry laugh. ‘And there it is again. You see? Just stupidity. When the money ran out for the new hospital . . .’

  ‘Why did it? Sometimes I hear it was the Swedes, then it was the Germans, who was it?’

  ‘Who cares? Swedes, Danes, the Yanks, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh–but the money vanished from the bank account in Senga and they pulled out. The World Bank or Global Money or Caring International or somebody, there are hundreds of these do-gooding idiots, they are trying to find new funding but so far no luck. We don’t know what is happening. Meanwhile the cases of equipment are just rotting, so the blacks say.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen them. But why send the equipment before the hospital was even built?’

  ‘Typical,’ said Edna Pyne, with the satisfaction of being proved right, yet again. ‘Don’t ask why, if it’s bloody incompetence then don’t even ask. The hospital was supposed to be up and running within six months, well I ask you, what rubbish, well what do you expect from the idiots in Senga? So the local Big Boss, Mr Mandizi as he calls himself, went to the n’ganga and asked him to put it about that he had put a curse on anyone who stole from the cases or even laid a finger on them.’

  Cedric Pyne let out a short barking laugh. ‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘Come on, Edna, that’s pretty clever.’

  ‘If you say so, dear. Well, it worked. But then it seemed you went over and helped yourself. That broke the spell.’

  ‘Half a dozen bedpans. We didn’t have even one at our hospital.’

  ‘Half a dozen too many,’ said Cedric.

  ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me? Six women from our village came with me and Rebecca. They just–helped themselves. They didn’t tell me anything.’

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t, would they? You’re the Mission, you’re God the Father and the Church and Father McGuire is on at them for being superstitious. But with you there, they probably thought God’s muti was stronger than the medicine man’s.’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t turned out to be. Because now people are dying and it is because they stole from the cases. So Rebecca says. But it’s AIDS.’

  ‘Oh, AIDS.’

  ‘Why do you say it like that? It’s a fact.’

  ‘It’s the last bloody straw,’ said Edna Pyne, ‘that’s why. They come up from the compound and want muti. I tell them there isn’t muti for AIDS, and they seem to think I’ve got muti but won’t give it to them.’

  ‘I know the n’ganga,’ said Sylvia. ‘Sometimes I ask him to help me.’

  ‘Well,’ said Cedric, ‘that’s an innocent walking into the lion’s den, if you like.’

  ‘Don’t touch it–’ said Edna, sounding peevish, at the end of her tether, and intending to sound it.

  ‘When I have cases our medicine doesn’t reach–such as I’ve got–I ask him to come when Rebecca tells me they think they’ve got the evil eye put on them. I ask him to tell them they haven’t been–cursed, or whatever . . . I say to him, I don’t want to meddle in his medicine. I just wanted his help. Last time he went to each of the people who were lying there–I thought they were going to die. I don’t know what he said, but some of them just got up and walked off–they were cured.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘The n’gangas know about AIDS–about Slim. They know more about it than the government people do. He said he couldn’t cure AIDS. He said he could treat some of the symptoms, like coughs. Don’t you see–I’m glad to use his medicine, I have so little. Half the time I don’t even have antibiotics. When I went into the medicine hut this afternoon–I’ve been in London–there was hardly anything there, most of what I had was stolen.’ She was sounding shrill, then tearful.

  The Pynes glanced at each other, and Edna said, ‘It’s getting on top of you. It’s no good taking things to heart.’

  ‘And who’s talking?’ said Cedric.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Edna. And to Sylvia. ‘I know how it is. You get back from England, and you’re on a rush of adrenalin and you just go on, and then–whoomph, you’re whacked, and can’t move for a couple of days. Now you go and lie down for an hour. I’ll ring the Mission and tell them.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Sylvia, remembering the most important thing she wanted to ask them. At lunch Sylvia had heard that she–Sylvia–was a South African spy.

  Weeping, because it seemed she was unable to stop, she told them this, and Edna laughed and said, ‘Think nothing of it. Don’t waste tears on that. We are supposed to be spies too. Give a dog a bad name and hang it. You can steal farms off South African spies with a good conscience.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Edna,’ said Cedric. ‘They don’t need that. They can just take them.’

  Inside the circle of Edna’s strong arm Sylvia was led to a large room at the back of the house, and put on a bed. Edna drew the curtains and left. Over the thin cotton of the curtains cloud movements laid swift shadows, the yellow sunlight of late afternoon came back, then there
was sudden darkness, and thunder crashed, and the rain came down on the iron roof in a pandemonium. Sylvia slept. She was woken by a smiling black man with a cup of tea. During the Liberation War the Pynes’ trusted cook had shown the guerillas the way into the house, and then had left, to join them. ‘He didn’t have any alternative but to join them,’ Father McGuire had said. ‘He’s not a bad sort of man. He’s working now for the Finlays over at Koodoo Creek. No, of course they don’t know his history, what good would that do?’ The priest’s comments on passing events were as detached as a historian’s, even if his personal grumbles were not. Interesting that: judging by the tones of a voice, Father McGuire’s indigestion was of the same scale of importance as Sister Molly’s disapproval of the Pope, the Pynes’ complaints about the black government–or Sylvia’s tears because her medicine hut was empty.

  Sundowners on the verandah: the storm had gone, the bushes and flowers sparkled, the birds were singing their hearts out. Paradise. And if she, Sylvia, had made this farm, built this house, worked so hard, would she not have felt as the Pynes did, for a violent sense of injustice was poisoning them. As the drinks were poured, and titbits thrown to Lusaka and Sheba, while their claws scraped and clacked on the cement, as they jumped up, jaws snapping, and while Sylvia listened, the Pynes talked and talked, obsessed and bitter. Once she had said on this verandah–but she had been a neophyte then–‘But if you, I mean the whites, had educated the blacks, then there wouldn’t be all this trouble now, would there? They’d be trained and efficient.’