African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  Tommy took out the five pound notes and gave them to Dirk.

  Dirk pushed them back. “What for?” he asked.

  “I got them from him,” said Tommy, and at once Dirk took them as if they were his right.

  And at once, inside Tommy, came indignation, for he felt he was being taken for granted, and he said: “Why aren’t you working?”

  “He said I needn’t. He means, while you are having your holidays.”

  “I got you free,” said Tommy, boasting.

  Dirk’s eyes narrowed in anger. “He’s my father,” he said, for the first time.

  “But he made you work,” said Tommy, taunting him. And then: “Why do you work? I wouldn’t. I should say no.”

  “So you would say no?” said Dirk in angry sarcasm.

  “There’s no law to make you.”

  “So there’s no law, white boy, no law . . .” But Tommy had sprung at him, and they were fighting again, rolling over and over, and this time they fell apart from exhaustion and lay on the ground panting for a long time.

  Later Dirk said: “Why do we fight, it’s silly?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tommy, and he began to laugh, and Dirk laughed too. They were to fight often in the future, but never with such bitterness, because of the way they were laughing now.

  It was the following holidays before they fought again. Dirk was waiting for him in the shed.

  “Did he let you go?” asked Tommy at once, putting down new books on the table for Dirk.

  “I just came,” said Dirk. “I didn’t ask.”

  They sat together on the bench, and at once a leg gave way and they rolled off on the floor laughing. “We must mend it,” said Tommy. “Let’s build the shed again.”

  “No,” said Dirk at once, “don’t let’s waste time on the shed. You can teach me while you’re here, and I can make the shed when you’ve gone back to school.”

  Tommy slowly got up from the floor, frowning. Again he felt he was being taken for granted. “Aren’t you going to work on the mine during the term?”

  “No, I’m not going to work on the mine again. I told him I wouldn’t.”

  “You’ve got to work,” said Tommy, grandly.

  “So I’ve got to work,” said Dirk, threateningly. “You can go to school, white boy, but I’ve got to work, and in the holidays I can just take time off to please you.”

  They fought until they were tired, and five minutes afterwards they were seated on the anthill talking. “What did you do with the five pounds?” asked Tommy.

  “I gave them to my mother.”

  “What did she do with them?”

  “She bought herself a dress, and then food for us all, and bought me these trousers, and she put the rest away to keep.”

  A pause. Then, deeply ashamed, Tommy asked: “Doesn’t he give her any money?”

  “He doesn’t come any more. Not for more than a year.”

  “Oh, I thought he did still,” said Tommy casually, whistling.

  “No.” Then, fiercely, in a low voice: “There’ll be some more half-castes in the compound soon.”

  Dirk sat crouching, his fierce black eyes on Tommy, ready to spring at him. But Tommy was sitting with his head bowed, looking at the ground. “It’s not fair,” he said. “It’s not fair.”

  “So you’ve discovered that, white boy?” said Dirk. It was said good-naturedly, and there was no need to fight. They went to their books and Tommy taught Dirk some new sums.

  But they never spoke of what Dirk would do in the future, how he would use all this schooling. They did not dare.

  That was the eleventh year.

  When they were twelve, Tommy returned from school to be greeted by the words: “Have you heard the news?”

  “What news?”

  They were sitting as usual on the bench. The shed was newly built, with strong thatch, and good walls, plastered this time with mud, so as to make it harder for the ants.

  “They are saying you are going to be sent away.”

  “Who says so?”

  “Oh, everyone,” said Dirk, stirring his feet about vaguely under the table. This was because it was the first few minutes after the return from school, and he was always cautious, until he was sure Tommy had not changed towards him. And that “everyone” was explosive. Tommy nodded, however, and asked apprehensively: “Where to?”

  “To the sea.”

  “How do they know?” Tommy scarcely breathed the word they.

  “Your cook heard your mother say so . . .” And then Dirk added with a grin, forcing the issue: “Cheek, dirty kaffirs talking about white men.”

  Tommy smiled obligingly, and asked: “How, to the sea, what does it mean?”

  “How should we know, dirty kaffirs.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Tommy, angrily. They glared at each other, their muscles tensed. But they sighed and looked away. At twelve it was not easy to fight, it was all too serious.

  That night Tommy said to his parents: “They say I’m going to sea. Is it true?”

  His mother asked quickly: “Who said so?”

  “But is it true?” Then, derisively: “Cheek, dirty kaffirs talking about us.”

  “Please don’t talk like that, Tommy, it’s not right.”

  “Oh, mother, please, how am I going to sea?”

  “But be sensible Tommy, it’s not settled, but Mr. Macintosh . . .”

  “So it’s Mr. Macintosh!”

  Mrs. Clarke looked at her husband, who came forward and sat down and settled his elbows on the table. A family conference. Tommy also sat down.

  “Now listen, son. Mr. Macintosh has a soft spot for you. You should be grafeful to him. He can do a lot for you.”

  “But why should I go to sea?”

  “You don’t have to. He suggested it—he was in the Merchant Navy himself once.”

  “So I’ve got to go just because he did.”

  “He’s offered to pay for you to go to college in England, and give you money until you’re in the Navy.”

  “But I don’t want to be a sailor. I’ve never even seen the sea.”

  “But you’re good at your figures, and you have to be, so why not?”

  “I won’t,” said Tommy, angrily. “I won’t, I won’t.” He glared at them through tears. “You want to get rid of me, that’s all it is. You want me to go away from here, from . . .”

  The parents looked at each other and sighed.

  “Well, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. But it’s not every boy who has a chance like this.”

  “Why doesn’t he send Dirk?” asked Tommy, aggressively.

  “Tommy,” cried Annie Clarke, in great distress.

  “Well, why doesn’t he? He’s much better than me at figures.”

  “Go to bed,” said Mr. Clarke suddenly, in a fit of temper. “Go to bed.”

  Tommy went out of the room, slamming the door hard. He must be grown-up. His father had never spoken to him like that. He sat on the edge of the bed in stubborn rebellion, listening to the thudding of the stamps. And down in the compound they were dancing, the lights of the fires flickered red on his window-pane.

  He wondered if Dirk were there, leaping around the fires with the others.

  Next day he asked him: “Do you dance with the others?” At once he knew he had blundered. When Dirk was angry, his eyes darkened and narrowed. When he was hurt, his mouth set in a way which made the flesh pinch thinly under his nose. So he looked now.

  “Listen, white boy. White people don’t like us half-castes. Neither do the blacks like us. No one does. And so I don’t dance with them.”

  “Let’s do some lessons,” said Tommy, quickly. And they went to their books, dropping the subject.

  Later Mr. Macintosh came to the Clarkes’ house and asked for Tommy. The parents watched Mr. Macintosh and their son walk together along the edge of the great pit. They stood at the window and watched, but they did not speak.

  Mr. Macintosh was saying easily:
“Well, laddie, and so you don’t want to be a sailor.”

  “No, Mr. Macintosh.”

  “I went to sea when I was fifteen. It’s hard, but you aren’t afraid of that. Besides, you’d be an officer.”

  Tommy said nothing.

  “You don’t like the idea?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Macintosh stopped and looked down into the pit. The earth at the bottom was as yellow as it had been when Tommy was seven, but now it was much deeper. Mr. Macintosh did not know how deep, because he had not measured it. Far below, in this man-made valley, the workers were moving and shifting like black seeds tilted on a piece of paper.

  “Your father worked on the mines and he became an engineer working at nights, did you know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was very hard for him. He was thirty before he was qualified, and then he earned twenty-five pounds a month until he came to this mine.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t want to do that, do you?”

  “I will if I have to,” muttered Tommy, defiantly.

  Mr. Macintosh’s face was swelling and purpling. The veins along nose and forehead were black. Mr. Macintosh was asking himself why this lad treated him like dirt, when he was offering to do him an immense favour. And yet, in spite of the look of sullen indifference which was so ugly on that young face, he could not help loving him. He was a fine boy, tall, strong, and his hair was the soft, bright brown, and his eyes clear and black. A much better man than his father, who was rough and marked by the long struggle of his youth. He said: “Well, you don’t have to be a sailor, perhaps you’d like to go to university and be a scholar.”

  “I don’t know,” said Tommy, unwillingly, although his heart had moved suddenly. Pleasure—he was weakening. Then he said suddenly: “Mr. Macintosh, why do you want to send me to college?”

  And Mr. Macintosh fell right into the trap. “I have no children,” he said, sentimentally. “I feel for you like my own son.” He stopped. Tommy was looking away towards the compound, and his intention was clear.

  “Very well then,” said Mr. Macintosh, harshly. “If you want to be a fool.”

  Tommy stood with his eyes lowered and he knew quite well he was a fool. Yet he could not have behaved in any other way.

  “Don’t be hasty,” said Mr. Macintosh, after a pause. “Don’t throw away your chances, laddie. You’re nothing but a lad, yet. Take your time.” And with this tone, he changed all the emphasis of the conflict, and made it simply a question of waiting. Tommy did not move, so Mr. Macintosh went on quickly: “Yes, that’s right, you just think it over.” He hastily slipped a pound note from his pocket and put it into the boy’s hand.

  “You know what I’m going to do with it?” said Tommy, laughing suddenly, and not at all pleasantly.

  “Do what you like, do just as you like, it’s your money,” said Mr. Macintosh, turning away so as not to have to understand.

  Tommy took the money to Dirk, who received it as if it were his right, a feeling in which Tommy was now an accomplice, and they sat together in the shed. “I’ve got to be something,” said Tommy angrily. “They’re going to make me be something.”

  “They wouldn’t have to make me be anything,” said Dirk, sardonically. “I know what I’d be.”

  “What?” asked Tommy, enviously.

  “An engineer.”

  “How do you know what you’ve got to do?”

  “That’s what I want,” said Dirk, stubbornly.

  After a while Tommy said: “If you went to the city, there’s a school for coloured children.”

  “I wouldn’t see my mother again.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s laws, white boys, laws. Anyone who lives with and after the fashion of the natives is a native. Therefore I’m a native, and I’m not entitled to go to school with the half-castes.”

  “If you went to the town, you’d not be living with the natives so you’d be classed as a coloured.”

  “But then I couldn’t see my mother, because if she came to town she’d still be a native.”

  There was a triumphant conclusiveness in this that made Tommy think: He intends to get what he wants another way . . . And then: Through me . . . But he had accepted that justice a long time ago, and now he looked at his own arm that lay on the rough plank of the table. The outer side was burnt dark and dry with the sun, and the hair glinted on it like fine copper. It was no darker than Dirk’s brown arm, and no lighter. He turned it over. Inside, the skin was smooth, dusky white, the veins running blue and strong across the wrist. He looked at Dirk, grinning, who promptly turned his own arm over, in a challenging way. Tommy said, unhappily: “You can’t go to school properly because the inside of your arm is brown. And that’s that!” Dirk’s tight and bitter mouth expanded into the grin that was also his father’s, and he said: “That is so, white boy, that is so.”

  “Well, it’s not my fault,” said Tommy, aggressively, closing his fingers and banging the fist down again and again.

  “I didn’t say it was your fault,” said Dirk at once.

  Tommy said, in that uneasy, aggressive tone: “I’ve never even seen your mother.”

  To this, Dirk merely laughed, as if to say: You have never wanted to.

  Tommy said, after a pause: “Let me come and see her now.”

  Then Dirk said, in a tone which was uncomfortable, almost like compassion: “You don’t have to.”

  “Yes,” insisted Tommy. “Yes, now.” He got up, and Dirk rose too. “She won’t know what to say,” warned Dirk. “She doesn’t speak English.” He did not really want Tommy to go to the compound; Tommy did not really want to go. Yet they went.

  In silence they moved along the path between the trees, in silence skirted the edge of the pit, in silence entered the trees on the other side, and moved along the paths to the compound. It was big, spread over many acres, and the huts were in all stages of growth and decay, some new, with shining thatch, some tumble-down, with dulled and sagging thatch, some in the process of being built, the peeled wands of the roof-frames gleaming like milk in the sun.

  Dirk led the way to a big square hut. Tommy could see people watching him walking with the coloured boy, and turning to laugh and whisper. Dirk’s face was proud and tight, and he could feel the same look on his own face. Outside the square hut sat a little girl of about ten. She was bronze, Dirk’s colour. Another little girl, quite black, perhaps six years old, was squatted on a log, finger in mouth, watching them. A baby, still unsteady on its feet, came staggering out of the doorway and collapsed, chuckling, against Dirk’s knees. Its skin was almost white. Then Dirk’s mother came out of the hut after the baby, smiled when she saw Dirk, but went anxious and bashful when she saw Tommy. She made a little bobbing curtsey, and took the baby from Dirk, for the sake of something to hold in her awkward and shy hands.

  “This is Baas Tommy,” said Dirk. He sounded very embarrassed.

  She made another little curtsey and stood smiling.

  She was a large woman, round and smooth all over, but her legs were slender, and her arms, wound around the child, thin and knotted. Her round face had a bashful curiosity, and her eyes moved quickly from Dirk to Tommy and back, while she smiled and smiled, biting her lips with strong teeth, and smiled again.

  Tommy said: “Good morning,” and she laughed and said “Good morning.”

  Then Dirk said: “Enough now, let’s go.” He sounded very angry. Tommy said: “Goodbye.” Dirk’s mother said: “Goodbye,” and made her little bobbing curtsey, and she moved her child from one arm to another and bit her lip anxiously over her gleaming smile.

  Tommy and Dirk went away from the square mud hut where the variously-coloured children stood staring after them.

  “There now,” said Dirk, angrily. “You’ve seen my mother.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Tommy uncomfortably, feeling as if the responsibility for the whole thing rested on him. But Dirk laughed suddenly and said: “Oh, all
right, all right, white boy, it’s not your fault.”

  All the same, he seemed pleased that Tommy was upset.

  Later, with an affectation of indifference, Tommy asked, thinking of those new children: “Does Mr. Macintosh come to your mother again now?”

  And Dirk answered “Yes,” just one word.

  In the shed Dirk studied from a geography book, while Tommy sat idle and thought bitterly that they wanted him to be a sailor. Then his idle hands protested, and he took a knife and began slashing at the edge of the table. When the gashes showed a whiteness from the core of the wood, he took a stick lying on the floor and whittled at it, and when it snapped from thinness he went out to the trees, picked up a lump of old wood from the ground, and brought it back to the shed. He worked on it with his knife, not knowing what it was he made, until a curve under his knife reminded him of Dirk’s sister squatting at the hut door, and then he directed his knife with a purpose. For several days he fought with the lump of wood, while Dirk studied. Then he brought a tin of boot polish from the house, and worked the bright brown wax into the creamy white wood, and soon there was a bronze-coloured figure of the little girl, staring with big, curious eyes while she squatted on spindly legs.

  Tommy put it in front of Dirk, who turned it around, grinning a little. “It’s like her,” he said at last. “You can have it if you like,” said Tommy. Dirk’s teeth flashed, he hesitated, and then reached into his pocket and took out a bundle of dirty cloth. He undid it, and Tommy saw the little clay figure he had made of Dirk years ago. It was crumbling, almost worn to a lump of mud, but in it was still the vigorous challenge of Dirk’s body. Tommy’s mind signalled recognition—for he had forgotten he had ever made it—and he picked it up. “You kept it?” he asked shyly, and Dirk smiled. They looked at each other, smiling. It was a moment of warm, close feeling, and yet in it was the pain that neither of them understood, and also the cruelty and challenge that made them fight. They lowered their eyes unhappily. “I’ll do your mother,” said Tommy, getting up and running away into the trees, in order to escape from the challenging closeness. He searched until he found a thorn tree, which is so hard it turns the edge of an axe, and then he took an axe and worked at the felling of the tree until the sun went down. A big stone near him was kept wet to sharpen the axe, and next day he worked on until the tree fell. He sharpened the worn axe again, and cut a length of tree about two feet, and split off the tough bark, and brought it back to the shed. Dirk had fitted a shelf against the logs of the wall at the back. On it he had set the tiny, crumbling figure of himself, and the new bronze shape of his little sister. There was a space left for the new statue. Tommy said, shyly: “I’11 do it as quickly as I can so that it will be done before the terms starts.” Then, lowering his eyes, which suffered under this new contract of shared feeling, he examined the piece of wood. It was not pale and gleaming like almonds, as was the softer wood. It was a gingery brown, a close-fibred, knotted wood, and down its centre, as he knew, was a hard black spine. He turned it between his hands and thought that this was more difficult than anything he had ever done. For the first time he studied a piece of wood before starting on it, with a desired shape in his mind, trying to see how what he wanted would grow out of the dense mass of material he held.