African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  Pavu speaks for the first time: “He says I was not strong enough for the work!” Jabavu looks at him in surprise. He sees that his brother is offended. “I am fifteen years old, so the Native Commissioner has said, and for five years already I have been working for my father. And yet this man says I am not strong enough.” Jabavu sees that the fear and the anger in his brother are having a fight, and it is by no means certain which will win. He says: “Did you understand, my brother, that this was a recruiter for the mines in Johannesburg?”

  Pavu is silent. Yes, he understood it, but his pride is speaking too loudly to allow any other voice to be heard. Jabavu decides to say nothing. For his own thoughts are moving too fast. First he thinks: That was a fine fellow with his smart white clothes! Then he thinks: Am I mad to be thinking of the mines? For this city we are going to is hard and dangerous, yet it is small in comparison with Johannesburg, or so the travellers tell us—and now my brother who has the heart of a chicken is so wounded in his pride that he is ready not only for the small city, but for Johannesburg!

  The brothers linger under the bushes, though the road is empty. The sun comes from overhead and their stomachs begin to speak of food. They open the bundles their mother has made for them and find small, flat cakes of mealie-meal, baked in the ashes. They eat the cakes, and their stomachs are only half silenced. They are a long way from proper food and the city, and yet they stay in the safety of the bushes. The sun has shifted so that it strikes on their right shoulders when they come out of the bushes. They walk slowly, and every time a lorry passes they turn their faces away as they walk through the grass at the edge of the road. Their faces are so firmly turned that it is a surprise to them when they understand that another lorry has stopped, and they peer cautiously around to see yet another fine fellow grinning at them.

  “Want a nice job?” he says, smiling politely.

  “We do not wish to go to the mines,” says Jabavu.

  “Who said the mines?” laughs the man. “Job in office, with pay seven pounds a month, perhaps ten, who knows?” His laughter is not the kind one may trust, and Jabavu’s eyes lift from the beautiful black boots this dandy is wearing, and he is about to say “No,” when Pavu asks, suddenly: “And there is a job for me also?”

  The fellow hesitates, and it is for as long as it would take him to say “Yes” several times. Jabavu can see the pride strong on Pavu’s face.

  Then the fellow says: “Yes, yes, there is a job for you also. In time you will grow to be as strong as your brother.” He is looking at Jabavu’s shoulders and thick legs. He brings out a piece of paper and hands it to the brother, not to Jabavu. And Pavu is ashamed because he has never held a pencil and the paper feels light and difficult to him, and he clutches it between his fingers as if it might blow away. Jabavu is glowing with anger. It is he who should have been asked; he is the older, and the leader, and he can write. “What is written on this paper?” he asks.

  “The job is written on this paper,” says the fellow, as if it were of no importance.

  “Before we put our names on the paper we shall see what this job is,” says Jabavu, and the fellow’s eyes shift, and then he says: “Your brother has already made his cross, so now you make your name also, otherwise you will be separated.” Jabavu looks at Pavu, who is smiling a half-proud, half-sickly smile, and he says softly: “That was a foolish thing, my brother, the white man makes an important thing of such crosses.”

  Pavu looks in fear at the paper where he has put his cross, and the fine fellow rocks on his feet with laughter and says: “That is true. You have signed this paper, and so have agreed to work for two years at the mines, and if you do not it means a broken contract, and that is prison. And now”—this he says to Jabavu—“you sign also, for we shall take your brother in the lorry, since he has signed the paper.”

  Jabavu sees that the hand of the fine fellow is reaching out to grasp Pavu’s shoulder. In one movement he butts his head into the fellow’s stomach and pushes Pavu away, and then both turn and run. They run leaping through the bushes till they have run a long way. Fearful glances over their shoulders show that the fine fellow does not attempt to chase them, but stands looking after them, for the breath being shaken from his stomach has darkened his eyes. After a while they hear the lorry growl, then rumble, then purr into silence along the road.

  Jabavu says, after a long time of thinking: “It is true that when our people go to the city they change so that their own family would not know them. That man, he who told us the lies, would he have been such a skellum in his own village?” Pavu does not reply, and Jabavu follows his thoughts until he begins to laugh. “Yet we were cleverer than he was!” he says, and as he remembers how he butted his head into the fine fellow’s stomach he rolls on the ground with laughing. Then he sits up again—for Pavu is not laughing, and on his face is a look that Jabavu knows well. Pavu is still so frightened that he is trembling all over, and his face is turned away so that Jabavu may not see it. Jabavu speaks to him as gently as a young man to a girl. But Pavu has had enough. It is in his mind to go back home, and Jabavu knows it. He pleads until the darkness comes filtering through the trees and they must find a place to sleep. They do not know this part of the country, it is more than six hours’ walking from home. They do not like to sleep in the open where the light of their fire might be seen, but they find some big rocks with a cleft between, and here they build a fire and light it as their fathers did before them, and they lie down to sleep, cold because of their naked shoulders and legs, very hungry, and no prospect of waking to a meal of good, warm porridge. Jabavu falls asleep thinking that when they wake in the morning with the sun falling kindly through the trees, Pavu will have regained his courage and forgotten the recruiter. But when he wakes, Jabavu is alone. Pavu has run away very early, as soon as the light showed, as much afraid of Jabavu the Big Mouth’s clever tongue as he is of the recruiters. By now he will have run halfway back along the road home. Jabavu is so angry that he flings stones at the trees, calling the trees Pavu. He is so angry that he exhausts himself with dancing and shouting, and finally he quietens and wonders whether he should run after his brother and make him turn around. Then he says to himself it is too late, and that anyway Pavu is nothing but a frightened child and no help to a brave man like himself. For a moment he thinks that he too will return home, because of his very great fear of going on to the city alone. And then he decides to go alone, and immediately: he, Jabavu, is afraid of nothing.

  And yet it is not so easy to leave the sheltering trees and take the road. He lingers there, encouraging himself, saying that yesterday he outwitted the recruiters when so many fail. I am Jabavu, he says, I am Jabavu, who is too clever for the tricks of bad white men and bad black men. He thumps himself on the chest. He dances a little, kicking up the leaves and grass until they make a little whirlpool around him. “I am Jabavu, the Big Mouth . . .” It turns into a song.

  Here is Jabavu,

  Here is the Big Mouth of the clever true words.

  I am coming to the city,

  To the big city of the white man.

  I walk alone, hau! hau!

  I fear no recruiter,

  I trust no one, not even my brother.

  I am Jabavu, who goes alone.

  And with this he leaves the bush and takes the road, and when he hears a lorry he runs into the bush and waits until it has gone past.

  Because he has so often to hide in the bush his progress is very slow, and when the sun turns red that evening he has still not reached the city. Perhaps he has taken the wrong road? He does not dare ask anyone. If someone walks along the road and greets him he remains silent, for fear of a trap. He is so hungry that it can no longer be called hunger. His stomach has got tired of speaking to him of its emptiness and has become silent and sulky, while his legs tremble as if the bones inside have gone soft, and his head is big and light as if a wind has got into it. He creeps off into the bush to look for roots and leaves, and he gnaws at them
, while his stomach mutters: Eh, Jabavu! So you offer me leaves after so long a fasting? Then he crouches under a tree, his head lowered, hands dangling limp, and for the first time his fear of what he might find in the big city goes through him again and again like a spear and he wishes he had not left home. Pavu will be sitting by the fire now, eating the evening meal . . . The dusk settles, the trees first loom huge and black, then settle into general darkness, and from quite close Jabavu sees a glow of fire. Caution stiffens his limbs. Then he drags himself to his feet and walks towards the fire as carefully as if he were stalking a hare. From a safe distance he kneels to peer through the leaves at the fire. Three people, two men and a woman, sit by it, and they are eating. Jabavu’s mouth fills with water like a tin standing in heavy rain. He spits. His heart is hammering at him: Trust no one, trust no one! Then his hunger yawns inside him and he thinks: With us it has always been that a traveller may ask for hospitality at a fire—it cannot be that everyone has become cold and unfriendly. He steps forward, his hunger pushing him, his fear dragging him back. When the three people see him they stiffen and stare and speak together, and Jabavu understands that they are afraid he comes for harm. Then they look at his torn trousers—no longer so tight on him now, and they greet him kindly, as one from the villages. Jabavu returns the greetings and pleads: “My brothers, I am very hungry.”

  The woman at once lays out for him some white, flat cakes, and some pieces of yellowish substance, which Jabavu eats like a hungry dog, and when his sick hunger has quietened he asks what they were, and they tell him this is food from the city, he has eaten fish and buns. Jabavu now looks at them and sees that they are dressed well, they wear shoes—even the woman—they have proper shirts and trousers and the woman has a red dress with a yellow crocheted cap on her head. For a moment the fear returns: These are people from the city, perhaps skellums? His muscles tense, his eyes glare, but they speak to him, laughing, telling him they are respectable people. Jabavu is silent, for he is wondering why they travel on foot like village people, instead of by train or lorry service, as is usual for city people. Also, he is annoyed that they have so quickly understood what he is thinking. But his pride is soothed when they say: “When people from the villages first come to the city they see a skellum in every person. But that is much wiser than trusting everyone. You do well to be cautious.”

  They pack away what food is left in a square, brown case that has a shiny metal clasp. Jabavu is fascinated to see how it works, and asks if he may also move the clasp, and they smile and say he may. Then they pile more wood on the fire and they talk quietly while Jabavu listens. What they say is only half-understood by him. They are speaking of the city and of the white man, not as do the people of the villages, with voices that are sad, admiring, fearful. Nor do they speak as Jabavu feels, as of a road to an exciting new country where everything is possible. No, they measure their words, and there is a quiet bitterness that hurts Jabavu, for it says to him: What a fool you are with your big hopes and dreams.

  He understands that the woman is wife to one of the men, Mr. Samu, and sister to the other. This woman is like no woman he has met or heard about. When he tries to measure her difference he cannot, because of his inexperience. She wears smart clothes, but she is not a coquette, as he has heard are all the women of the towns. She is young and newly married, but she is serious and speaks as if what she says is as important as what the men say, and she does not use words like Jabavu’s mother: Yes, my husband, that is true, my husband, no, my husband. She is a nurse at the hospital for women in the Location at the city, and Jabavu’s eyes grow big when he hears it. She is educated! She can read and write! She understands the medicine of the white man! And Mr. Samu and the other are also educated. They can read, not only words like yes, no, good, bad, black, and white, but also long words like regulation and document. As they talk, words such as these fill their mouths, and Jabavu decides he will ask them what mean the words on the paper in his bundle which he has marked with charcoal. But he is ashamed to ask, and continues to listen. It is Mr. Samu who speaks most, but it is all so difficult that Jabavu’s brain grows heavy and he pokes the edges of the fire with a green twig, listening to the sizzle of the sap, watching the sparks snap up and fade into the dark. The stars are still and brilliant overhead. Jabavu thinks, sleepily, that the stars perhaps are the sparks from all the fires people make—they drift up and up until they come against the sky and there they must remain like flies crowding together looking for a way out.

  He shakes himself awake and gabbles: “Sir, will you explain to me . . .” He has taken the folded, stained piece of paper from his pocket and, kneeling, spreads it before Mr. Samu, who has stopped talking and is perhaps a little cross at being interrupted so irreverently.

  He reads the difficult words. He looks at Jabavu. Then, before explaining, he asks questions. How did Jabavu learn to read? Was he all by himself? He was? Why did he want to read and write? What does he think of what he reads?—Jabavu answers clumsily, afraid of the laughter of these clever people. They do not laugh. They lean on their elbows looking at him, and their eyes are soft. He tells of the torn alphabet, how he finished the alphabet himself, how he learned the words that explained the pictures, and finally the words that are by themselves without pictures. As he speaks, his tongue slips into English, out of sympathy with what he is saying, and he tells of the hours and weeks and months of years he has spent, beneath the big tree, teaching himself, wondering, asking questions.

  The three clever people look at each other, and their eyes say something Jabavu does not at once understand. And then Mrs. Samu leans forward and explains what the difficult sentence means, very patiently, in simple words, and also how the newspapers are, some for white people, some for black. She explains about the story of the little yellow people, and how wicked a story it is—and it seems to Jabavu that he learns more in a few minutes from this woman about the world he lives in, than he has in all his life. He wants to say to her: Stop, let me think about what you have said, or I shall forget it. But now Mr. Samu interrupts, leaning forward, speaking to Jabavu. After some moments of talking, it seems to Jabavu that Mr. Samu sees not only him, but many other people—his voice has lifted and grown strong, and his sentences swing up and down, as if they have been made often before, and in exactly the same way. So strong is this feeling that Jabavu looks over his shoulder to see if perhaps there are people behind him, but no, there is nothing but darkness and the trees showing a glint of starlight on their leaves.

  “This is a sad and terrible time for the people of Africa,” Mr. Samu is saying. “The white man has settled like a locust over Africa, and, like the locusts in early morning, cannot take flight for the heaviness of the dew on their wings. But the dew that weights the white man is the money that he makes from our labour. The white man is stupid or clever, brave or cowardly, kind or cruel, but all, all say one thing, if they say it in different ways. They may say that the black man has been chosen by God to serve as a drawer of water and a hewer of wood until the end of time; they may say that the white man protects the black from his own ignorance until that ignorance is lightened; two hundred years, five hundred, or a thousand—he will only be allowed free when he has learned to stand on his two feet like a child who lets go his mother’s skirts. But whatever they say, their actions are the same. They take us, men and women, into their houses to cook, clean, and tend their children; into their factories and mines; their lives are built on our work, and yet every day and every hour of every day they insult us, call us pigs and kaffirs or children, lazy, stupid, and ignorant. Their ugly names for us are as many as leaves on that tree, and every day the white people grow more rich and the black more poor. Truly, it is an evil time, and many of our people become evil, they learn to steal and to murder, they learn the ways of easy hatred, they become the pigs the white man says they are. And yet, though it is a terrible time, we should be proud that we live now, for our children and the children of our children will look back
and say: if it were not for them, those people who lived in the terrible time, and lived with courage and wisdom, our lives would be the lives of slaves. We are free because of them.”

  The first part of this speech Jabavu has understood very well, for he has often heard it before. So does his father speak, so all the travellers who come from the city. He was born with such words in his ears. But now they are becoming difficult. In a different tone does the voice of Mr. Samu continue, his hand is lifting and falling, he says trade union, organisation, politics, committee, reaction, progress, society, patience, education. And as each new and heavy word enters Jabavu’s mind he grabs at it, clutches it, examines it, tries to understand—and by that time a dozen such words have flown past his ears, and he is lost in bewilderment. He looks dazedly at Mr. Samu, who is leaning forward, that hand rising and falling, his steady, intent eyes fixed on his own, and it seems to him that those eyes sink into him, searching for his secret thoughts. He turns his own away, for he wishes them to remain secret. In the kraal I was always hungry, always waiting for when I would reach the plenty of the white man’s town. All my life my body has been speaking with the voices of hunger: I want, I want, I want. I want excitement and clothes and food, such as the fish and buns I have eaten tonight; I want a bicycle and the women of the town; I want, I want . . . And if I listen to these clever people, straight away my life will be bound to theirs, and it will not be dancing and music and clothes and food, but work, work, work, and trouble, danger and fear. For Jabavu has only just understood that these people travel so, at night, through the bush on foot, because they are going to another town with books, which speak of such matters as committees and organisation, and these books are not liked by the police.