African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  Mr. Macintosh, after some moments of heavy breathing, allowed his shrewdness to direct his anger. He dismissed the man, and turned away.

  During that morning he left his great pit and walked off into the bush in the direction of the towering blue peak. He had heard vaguely that Tommy had some kind of a hut, but imagined it as a child’s thing. He was still very angry because of that calculated “Baas Dirk.” He walked for a while along a smooth path through the trees, and came to a clearing. On the other side was an anthill, and on the anthill a well-built hut, draped with Christmas fern around the open front, like curtains. In the opening sat Dirk. He wore a clean white shirt, and long smooth trousers. His head, oiled and brushed close, was bent over books. The hand that turned the pages of the books had a brass ring on the little finger. He was the very image of an aspiring clerk: that form of humanity which Mr. Macintosh despised most.

  Mr. Macintosh remained on the edge of the clearing for some time, vaguely waiting for something to happen, so that he might fling himself, armoured and directed by his contemptuous anger, into a crisis which would destroy Dirk for ever. But nothing did happen. Dirk continued to turn the pages of the book, so Mr. Macintosh went back to his house, where he ate boiled beef and carrots for his dinner.

  Afterwards he went to a certain drawer in his bedroom, and from it took an object carelessly wrapped in cloth which, exposed, showed itself as that figure of Dirk the boy Tommy had made and sold for five pounds. And Mr. Macintosh turned and handled and pored over that crude wooden image of Dirk in a passion of curiosity, just as if the boy did not live on the same square mile of soil with him, fully available to his scrutiny at most hours of the day.

  If one imagines a Judgment Day with the graves giving up their dead impartially, black, white, bronze, and yellow, to a happy reunion, one of the pleasures of that reunion might well be that people who have lived on the same acre or street all their lives will look at each other with incredulous recognition. “So that is what you were like,” might be the gathering murmur around God’s heaven. For the glass wall between colour and colour is not only a barrier against touch, but has become thick and distorted, so that black men, white men, see each other through it, but see—what? Mr. Macintosh examined the image of Dirk as if searching for some final revelation, but the thought that came persistently to his mind was that the statue might be of himself as a lad of twelve. So after a few moments he rolled it again in the cloth and tossed it back into the corner of a drawer, out of sight, and with it the unwelcome and tormenting knowledge.

  Late that afternoon he left his house again and made his way towards the hut on the antheap. It was empty, and he walked through the knee-high grass and bushes till he could climb up the hard, slippery walls of the antheap and so into the hut.

  First he looked at the books in the case. The longer he looked, the faster faded that picture of Dirk as an oiled and mincing clerk, which he had been clinging to ever since he threw the other image into the back of a drawer. Respect for Dirk was reborn. Complicated mathematics, much more advanced than he had ever done. Geography. History. “The Development of the Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century.” “The Growth of Parliamentary Institutions in Great Britain.” This title made Mr. Macintosh smile—the freebooting buccaneer examining a coastguard’s notice perhaps. Mr. Macintosh lifted down one book after another and smiled. Then, beside these books, he saw a pile of slight, blue pamphlets, and he examined them. “The Natives Employment Act.” “The Natives Juvenile Employment Act.” “The Native Passes Act.” And Mr. Macintosh flipped over the leaves and laughed, and had Dirk heard that laugh it would have been worse to him than any whip.

  For as he patiently explained these laws and others like them to his bitter allies in the hut at night, it seemed to him that every word he spoke was like a stone thrown at Mr. Macintosh, his father. Yet Mr. Macintosh laughed, since he despised these laws, although in a different way, as much as Dirk did. When Mr. Macintosh, on his rare trips to the city, happened to drive past the House of Parliament, he turned on it a tolerant and appreciative gaze. “Well, why not?” he seemed to be saying. “It’s an occupation, like any other.”

  So to Dirk’s desperate act of retaliation he responded with a smile, and tossed back the books and pamphlets on the shelf. And then he turned to look at the other things in the shed, and for the first time he saw the high shelf where the statuettes were arranged. He looked, and felt his face swelling with that fatal rage. There was Dirk’s mother, peering at him in bashful sensuality from over the baby’s head, there the little girl, his daughter, squatting on spindly legs and staring. And there, on the edge of the shelf, a small, worn shape of clay which still held the vigorous strength of Dirk. Mr. Macintosh, breathing heavily, holding down his anger, stepped back to gain a clearer view of those figures, and his heel slipped on a slanting piece of wood. He turned to look, and there was the picture Tommy had carved and coloured of his mine. Mr. Macintosh saw the great pit, the black little figures tumbling and sprawling over into the flames, and he saw himself, stick in hand, astride on his two legs at the edge of the pit, his hat on the back of his head.

  And now Mr. Macintosh was so disturbed and angry that he was driven out of the hut and into the clearing, where he walked back and forth through the grass, looking at the hut while his anger growled and moved inside him. After some time he came close to the hut again and peered in. Yes, there was Dirk’s mother, peering bashfully from her shelf, as if to say: Yes, it’s me, remember? And there on the floor was the square tinted piece of wood which said what Tommy thought of him and his life. Mr. Macintosh took a box of matches from his pocket. He lit a match. He understood he was standing in the hut with a lit match in his hand to no purpose. He dropped the match and ground it out with his foot. Then he put a pipe in his mouth, filled it and lit it, gazing all the time at the shelf and at the square carving. The second match fell to the floor and lay spurting a small white flame. He ground his heel hard on it. Anger heaved up in him beyond all sanity, and he lit another match, pushed it into the thatch of the hut, and walked out of it and so into the clearing and away into the bush. Without looking behind him he walked back to his house where his supper of boiled beef and carrots was waiting for him. He was amazed, angry, resentful. Finally he felt aggrieved, and wanted to explain to someone what a monstrous injustice was Tommy’s view of him. But there was no one to explain it to; and he slowly quietened to a steady dulled sadness, and for some days remained so, until time restored him to normal. From this condition he looked back at his behaviour and did not like it. Not that he regretted burning the hut, it seemed to him unimportant. He was angry at himself for allowing his anger to dictate his actions. Also he knew that such an act brings its own results.

  So he waited, and thought mainly of the cruelty of fate in denying him a son who might carry on his work—for he certainly thought of his work as something to be continued. He thought sadly of Tommy, who denied him. And so, his affection for Tommy was sprung again by thinking of him, and he waited, thinking of reproachful things to say to him.

  When Tommy returned from school he went straight to the clearing and found a mound of ash on the antheap that was already sifted and swept by the wind. He found Dirk, sitting on a tree-trunk in the bush waiting for him.

  “What happened?” asked Tommy. And then, at once: “Did you save your books?”

  Dirk said: “He burnt it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  Tommy nodded. “All your books have gone,” he said, very grieved, and as guilty as if he had burnt them himself.

  “Your carvings and your statues are burnt too.”

  But at this Tommy shrugged, since he could not care about his things once they were finished. “Shall we build the hut again now?” he suggested.

  “My books are burnt,” said Dirk, in a low voice, and Tommy, looking at him, saw how his hands were clenched. He instinctively moved a little aside to give his friend’s anger space.
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  “When I grow up I’ll clear you all out, all of you, there won’t be one white man left in Africa, not one.”

  Tommy’s face had a small, half-scared smile on it. The hatred Dirk was directing against him was so strong he nearly went away. He sat beside Dirk on the tree-trunk and said: “I’ll try and get you more books.”

  “And then he’ll burn them again.”

  “But you’ve already got what was in them inside your head,” said Tommy, consolingly. Dirk said nothing, but sat like a clenched fist, and so they remained on the tree-trunk in the quiet bush while the doves cooed and the mine-stamps thudded, all that hot morning. When they had to separate at midday to return to their different worlds, it was with deep sadness, knowing that their childhood was finished, and their playing, and something new was ahead.

  And at the meal Tommy’s mother and father had his school report on the table, and they were reproachful. Tommy was at the foot of his class, and he would not matriculate that year. Or any year if he went on like this.

  “You used to be such a clever boy,” mourned his mother, “and now what’s happened to you?”

  Tommy, sitting silent at the table, moved his shoulders in a hunched, irritable way, as if to say: Leave me alone. Nor did he feel himself to be stupid and lazy, as the report said he was.

  In his room were drawing blocks and pencils and hammers and chisels. He had never said to himself he had exchanged one purpose for another, for he had no purpose. How could he, when he had never been offered a future he could accept? Now, at this time, in his fifteenth year, with his reproachful parents deepening their reproach, and the knowledge that Mr. Macintosh would soon see that report, all he felt was a locked stubbornness, and a deep strength.

  In the afternoon he went back to the clearing, and he took his chisels with him. On the old, soft, rotted tree-trunk that he sat on that morning, he sat again, waiting for Dirk. But Dirk did not come. Putting himself in his friend’s place he understood that Dirk could not endure to be with a white-skinned person—a white face, even that of his oldest friend, was too much the enemy. But he waited, sitting on the tree-trunk all through the afternoon, with his chisels and hammers in a little box at his feet in the grass, and he fingered the soft, warm wood he sat on, letting the shape and texture of it come into the knowledge of his fingers.

  Next day, there was still no Dirk.

  Tommy began walking around the fallen tree, studying it. It was very thick, and its roots twisted and slanted into the air to the height of his shoulder. He began to carve the root. It would be Dirk again.

  That night Mr. Macintosh came to the Clarkes’ house and read the report. He went back to his own, and sat wondering why Tommy was set so bitterly against him. The next day he went to the Clarkes’ house again to find Tommy, but the boy was not there.

  He therefore walked through the thick bush to the antheap, and found Tommy kneeling in the grass working on the tree root.

  Tommy said: “Good morning,” and went on working, and Mr. Macintosh sat on the trunk and watched.

  “What are you making?” asked Mr. Macintosh.

  “Dirk,” said Tommy, and Mr. Macintosh went purple and almost sprang up and away from the tree-trunk. But Tommy was not looking at him. So Mr. Macintosh remained, in silence. And then the useless vigour of Tommy’s concentration on that rotting bit of root goaded him, and his mind moved naturally to a new decision.

  “Would you like to be an artist?” he suggested.

  Tommy allowed his chisel to rest, and looked at Mr. Macintosh as if this were a fresh trap. He shrugged, and with the appearance of anger, went on with his work.

  “If you’ve a real gift, you can earn money by that sort of thing. I had a cousin back in Scotland who did it. He made souvenirs, you know, for travellers.” He spoke in a soothing and jolly way.

  Tommy let the souvenirs slide by him, as another of these impositions on his independence. He said: “Why did you burn Dirk’s books?”

  But Mr. Macintosh laughed in relief. “Why should I burn his books?” It really seemed ridiculous to him, his rage had been against Tommy’s work, not Dirk’s.

  “I know you did,” said Tommy. “I know it. And Dirk does too.”

  Mr. Macintosh lit his pipe in good humour. For now things seemed much easier. Tommy did not know why he had set fire to the hut, and that was the main thing. He puffed smoke for a few moments and said: “Why should you think I don’t want Dirk to study? It’s a good thing, a bit of education.”

  Tommy stared disbelievingly at him.

  “I asked Dirk to use his education, I asked him to teach some of the others. But he wouldn’t have any of it. Is that my fault?”

  Now Tommy’s face was completely incredulous. Then he went scarlet, which Mr. Macintosh did not understand. Why should the boy be looking so foolish? But Tommy was thinking: We were on the wrong track . . . And then he imagined what his offer must have done to Dirk’s angry, rebellious pride, and he suddenly understood. His face still crimson, he laughed. It was a bitter, ironical laugh, and Mr. Macintosh was upset—it was not a boy’s laugh at all.

  Tommy’s face slowly faded from crimson, and he went back to work with his chisel. He said, after a pause: “Why don’t you send Dirk to college instead of me? He’s much more clever than me. I’m not clever, look at my report.”

  “Well, laddie . . .” began Mr. Macintosh reproachfully—he had been going to say: “Are you being lazy at school simply to force my hand over Dirk?” He wondered at his own impulse to say it; and slid off into the familiar obliqueness which Tommy ignored: “But you know how things are, or you ought to by now. You talk as if you didn’t understand.”

  But Tommy was kneeling with his back to Mr. Macintosh, working at the root, so Mr. Macintosh continued to smoke. Next day he returned and sat on the tree-trunk and watched. Tommy looked at him as if he considered his presence an unwelcome gift, but he did not say anything.

  Slowly, the big fanged root which rose from the trunk was taking Dirk’s shape. Mr. Macintosh watched with uneasy loathing. He did not like it, but he could not stop watching. Once he said: “But if there’s a veld fire, it’ll get burnt. And the ants’ll eat it in any case.” Tommy shrugged. It was the making of it that mattered, not what happened to it afterwards, and this attitude was so foreign to Mr. Macintosh’s accumulating nature that it seemed to him that Tommy was touched in the head. He said: “Why don’t you work on something that’ll last? Or even if you studied like Dirk it would be better.”

  Tommy said: “I like doing it.”

  “But look, the ants are already at the trunk—by the time you get back from your school next time there’ll be nothing left of it.”

  “Or someone might set fire to it,” suggested Tommy. He looked steadily at Mr. Macintosh’s reddening face with triumph. Mr. Macintosh found the words too near the truth. For certainly, as the days passed, he was looking at the new work with hatred and fear and dislike. It was nearly finished. Even if nothing more were done to it, it could stand as it was, complete.

  Dirk’s long, powerful body came writhing out of the wood like something struggling free. The head was clenched back, in the agony of the birth, eyes narrowed and desperate, the mouth—Mr. Macintosh’s mouth—tightened in obstinate purpose. The shoulders were free, but the hands were held; they could not pull themselves out of the dense wood, they were imprisoned. His body was free to the knees, but below them the human limbs were uncreated, the natural shapes of the wood swelled to the perfect muscled knees.

  Mr. Macintosh did not like it. He did not know what art was, but he knew he did not like this at all, it disturbed him deeply, so that when he looked at it he wanted to take an axe and cut it to pieces. Or burn it, perhaps . . .

  As for Tommy, the uneasiness of this elderly man who watched him all day was a deep triumph. Slowly, and for the first time, he saw that perhaps this was not a sort of game that he played, it might be something else. A weapon—he watched Mr. Macintosh’s reluctant face, and
a new respect for himself and what he was doing grew in him.

  At night, Mr. Macintosh sat in his candlelit room and he thought or rather felt, his way to a decision.

  There was no denying the power of Tommy’s gift. Therefore, it was a question of finding the way to turn it into money. He knew nothing about these matters, however, and it was Tommy himself who directed him, for towards the end of the holidays he said: “When you’re so rich you can do anything. You could send Dirk to college and not even notice it.”

  Mr. Macintosh, in the reasonable and persuasive voice he now always used, said, “But you know these coloured people have nowhere to go.”

  Tommy said: “You could send him to the Cape. There are coloured people in the university there. Or Johannesburg.” And he insisted against Mr. Macintosh’s silence: “You’re so rich you can do anything you like.”

  But Mr. Macintosh, like most rich people, thought not of money as things to buy, things to do, but rather how it was tied up in buildings and land.

  “It would cost thousands,” he said. “Thousands for a coloured boy.”

  But Tommy’s scornful look silenced him, and he said hastily: “I’ll think about it.” But he was thinking not of Dirk, but of Tommy. Sitting alone in his room he told himself it was simply a question of paying for knowledge.

  So next morning he made his preparations for a trip to town. He shaved, and over his cotton singlet he put a striped jacket, which half concealed his long, stained khaki trousers. This was as far as he ever went in concessions to the city life he despised. He got into his big American car and set off.

  In the city he took the simplest route to knowledge.

  He went to the Education Department, and said he wanted to see the Minister of Education. “I’m Macintosh,” he said, with perfect confidence; and the pretty secretary who had been patronising his clothes, went at once to the Minister and said: “There is a Mr. Macintosh to see you.” She described him as an old, fat, dirty man with a large stomach, and soon the doors opened and Mr. Macintosh was with the spring of knowledge.