African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  Under the street-lights, but at great distances, since there are few lamps in the Native Township, shed small patches of yellow glimmer. Jabavu blunders straight into such a patch of light. “Be careful, fool,” says Jerry, in a violent, frightened voice. He drags Jabavu aside, and then stops. He is thinking: Perhaps this man is mad? How, otherwise, could he behave like this? How can I take a mad fool on a dangerous job like this? Perhaps I had better not go to the house . . . Then he looks at Jabavu, who is standing quiet and patient beside him, and he thinks: No, it is simply that he is so afraid of me. So he goes on walking, gripping Jabavu by the wrist.

  Then Jabavu laughs out loud and says: “I can see the Mizis* house, and there is a light in the window.”

  “Shut up,” says Jerry, and Jabavu goes on: “The men of light study, at night. There are things you know nothing of.”

  Jerry slams his hand over Jabavu’s mouth, and Jabavu bites the hand. Jerry jerks it away and for a moment stands trembling with the desire to slip his knife sweetly home between Jabavu’s ribs. But he keeps himself tight and controlled. He stands there, quietly shaking his bitten hand, looking at the light in the Mizis’ house. Now he can almost see the money, and the desire for it grows strong in him. He cannot bear to stop now, to turn back, to change the plan. It is so easy simply to go forward, the money will be his inside five minutes, then he will give Jabavu the slip and in another fifteen minutes he will be in the house of that friend who will shelter him safely till morning. It is all so easy, so easy. And to go back difficult and, above all, shameful. So he shuts his teeth close and promises himself: You wait, my fine kraal nigger. In a moment I’11 have got the money, and you might be caught. And even if you’re not, what will you do without me? You’ll go back to the gang, and without me they’re like a lot of chickens, and you’ll be in trouble with the police inside a week. The thought gives him great pleasure, so strong he nearly laughs, and in good humour he takes Jabavu’s wrist and pulls him forward.

  They walk until they are ten paces from the window, just beyond where the light falls dimly, showing the ground, rough and broken, and the bush under the window standing dense and black. The damp and windy dark is loud in their ears. They can see how Mr. Mizi’s son lies sprawled on his bed, still dressed. He has fallen asleep with a book in his hand.

  Jerry thinks rapidly, then he says: “You will climb quickly in at the window. Do not try to be clever. I can throw a knife as well as I can use it close, so . . .” He wriggles it lightly against the cloth of Jabavu’s coat and with what exultation feels Jabavu move away! It is strange that Jabavu has no fear for himself, but it hurts him even now to imagine his jacket cut and spoilt. He has moved away instinctively, almost with irritation, as if a fly were pestering him, yet he moved, and he hears Jerry’s voice, now strong and confident: “You will keep away from the door into the other room. You will stand against the wall, with your back to it, and reach out your arm sideways and switch the light off. You needn’t think you can be clever, for I shall keep my torch on you, so . . .” And he switches on the tiny torch he has in the palm of his hand, that sends a single, strong beam of light, as narrow as a pencil. He switches it off and grips his teeth tight, against the desire to curse, because the blood where Jabavu bit him is making the torch slippery. “Then I shall come into the room and tie that fool on the bed quickly, and then you will show me the money.”

  Jabavu is silent, and then he says: “But this money. I have told you there is no money. Why do you really come to this house?”

  Jerry grips his arm and says: “It’s time to stop joking.”

  Jabavu says: “Sometimes I said that there was money, but it was when we were making jokes. Surely you understood . . .” He stops, thinking about the nature of those jokes. Then he thinks: It does not matter, for when I am inside I shall call the Mizis.

  Jerry says: “And how could there not be money? Where does he keep the money for the League? Did you not see the place where such people keep what is forbidden? When I took money from Mr. Samu it was in such a place . . .” But Jabavu has pulled his arm free and is walking forward through the light to the window, making no effort to quieten his steps. Jerry hisses after him: “Quiet, quiet, you fool.”

  Then Jabavu pushes his heavy shoulder against the window so that it slides up with a bang, and he climbs in. Behind him Jerry is dancing and swearing with rage. For a second he wavers with the thought of running away. Then it is as if he sees a big tin full of money, and he flings himself across the lit space after Jabavu and climbs in the window.

  The two young men have climbed in at a window filled with light, and made a great deal of noise. The boy on the bed stirs, but Jerry has leaned over him, tangled his eyes in a cloth and stuffed into his mouth a handkerchief into which is kneaded some wet dough, while in the same movement he has knelt on his legs. He ties him with some thick string and in a moment the boy cannot move or see or cry out. But when Jabavu sees Mr. Mizi’s son lying tied up on the bed, something inside him moves and speaks, the heavy load of fatalistic indifference lifts, and he raises his voice and shouts: “Mr. Mizi, Mrs. Mizi!” It is the voice of a terrified child, for his terror of Jerry has returned. Jerry whips round, cursing, and lifts his arm with the knife in it. Jabavu jumps forward and grabs his wrist. The two stand swaying together under the light, their arms straining for the knife, when there is a noise in the room behind. Jerry springs aside, very quickly, so that Jabavu staggers, and then he jumps away and out of the window. As the door opens Jabavu is staggering back against the door with the knife in his hand.

  It is Mr. Mizi and Mrs. Mizi, and when they see him Mr. Mizi leaps forward and grips his arms to his body with his own, and Jabavu says: “No, no, I am your friend.”

  Mr. Mizi speaks over his shoulder to Mrs. Mizi: “Leave that boy. Give me some cloth to tie this one with.” For Mrs. Mizi is moaning with fear over her son who is lying helpless and half-suffocated under the cloth. And Jabavu stands limp under Mr. Mizi’s hands and says: “I am not a thief, I called you, but believe me, Mr. Mizi, I wanted to warn you.” Mr. Mizi is too angry to listen. He grips Jabavu’s wrists and watches Mrs. Mizi let her son loose.

  Then Mrs. Mizi turns to Jabavu and says, half crying: “We helped you, you came to our house, and now you steal from us.”

  “No, no, Mrs. Mizi, it is not so, I will tell you.”

  “You will tell the police,” says Mr. Mizi roughly. And Jabavu, looking at the hard, angry face of Mr. Mizi, feels that he has been betrayed. Somewhere inside him that well of despair slowly begins to fill again.

  The boy who is now sitting on the bed holding his jaw, which has been wrenched with the big lump of dough, says: “Why did you do it? Have we harmed you?”

  Jabavu says: “It was not I, it was the other.”

  But the son has had cloth wound over his eyes before he even opened them, and has seen nothing.

  Then Mr. Mizi looks at the knife lying on the ground and says: “You are a murderer as well as thief.” There is blood on the floor. Jabavu says: “No, the blood must be from Jerry’s hand, which I bit.” Already his voice is sullen.

  Mrs. Mizi says, with contempt: “You think we are fools. Twice you have run away. Once from Mr. and Mrs. Samu when they helped you in the bush. Then from us, when we helped you. All these weeks you have been with the matsotsis, and now you come here with a knife and expect us to say nothing when you tie our son and fill his mouth with uncooked bread?”

  Jabavu goes quite limp in Mr. Mizi’s grip. He says, simply: “You do not believe me.” Despair goes through his veins like a dark poison. For the second time that despair takes the people with him by surprise. Mr. Mizi lets go his grip and Mrs. Mizi, who is crying bitterly, says: “And a knife, Jabavu, a knife!”

  Mr. Mizi picks up the knife, sees there is no blood on it, looks at the blood on the floor, and says: “One thing is true. The blood does not come from a knife wound.” But Jabavu’s eyes are on the floor, and his face is heavy and indifferent.
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br />   Then the police come, all at once, some climbing through the window, some from the front of the house. The police put handcuffs on Jabavu and take a statement from Mr. Mizi. Mrs. Mizi is still crying and fluttering around her son.

  Only once does Jabavu speak. He says: “I am not a thief. I came here to tell you. I wish to live honestly.”

  And at this the policemen laugh and say that Jabavu, after only a few weeks in the Township, is known as one of the cleverest thieves and a member of the worst gang. And now, because of him, they will all be caught and put into prison.

  Jabavu hears this with indifference. He looks at Mrs. Mizi, and it is with the bitter look of a child whose mother has betrayed him. Then he looks at Mr. Mizi, and it is the same look. They look in a puzzled way at Jabavu. But Mr. Mizi is thinking: All my life I try to live in such a way to keep out of sight of the police, and now this little fool is going to make me waste time in the courts and get a name for being in trouble.

  Jabavu is taken to the police van, and is driven to the prison. There he lies that night, and sleeps with the dark, dreamless sleep of a man who has gone beyond hope. The Mizis have betrayed him. There is nothing left.

  In the morning he expects to be taken to the court, but he is transferred to another cell in the prison. He thinks this must be very serious indeed, for it is a cell to himself, a small brick room with a stone floor and a window high up with bars.

  A day passes, then another. The warders speak to him and he does not answer. Then a policeman comes to ask him questions, and Jabavu does not say a word. The policeman is first patient, then impatient, and finally threatening. He says the police know everything and Jabavu will gain nothing by keeping quiet. But Jabavu is silent because he does not care. He wishes only the policeman would go away, which at last he does.

  They bring him food and water, but he does not eat or drink unless he is told to do so, and then he eats or drinks automatically, but is likely to forget, and sit immobile, with a piece of bread or the mug in his hand. And he sleeps and sleeps as if his soul is drugging itself so that he may slip easily into death. He does not think of death, but it is there with him, in his cell, like a big, black shadow.

  And so a week passes, though Jabavu does not know it.

  On the eighth day the door opens and a white preacher comes in. Jabavu is asleep, but the warder kicks him till he wakes, then gives him a shake so that he stands up, and finally he sits when the preacher tells him to sit. He does not look at the preacher.

  This man is a Mr. Tennent from the Church of England, who visits the prisoners once a week. He is a tall man, lean, grey, stooping. He moves slowly, speaks slowly, and gives an impression of distrusting even the words he chooses to use.

  He is a deeply doubting man, as are so many of his persuasion. Perhaps, if he were from another church, that which the Africans call the Romans, he would enter his cell in a different way. Sin is this, a soul is that, there would be definite things to say, and his words would have the ring of a faith which does not change with changing life.

  But Mr. Tennent’s church allows him much latitude in belief. Also, he has been working with the poorer Africans of this city for many years, and he sees Jabavu rather as Mr. Mizi sees him. First, there is an economic process, and caught in it like a leaf in a whirlpool, there is Jabavu. He believes that to call a child like Jabavu sinful is lack of charity. On the other hand, a man who believes in God, if not the devil, must put the blame on something or someone—and what or who should it be? He does not know. His view of Jabavu robs him of comfort, even for himself.

  This man, who comes to the prison every week, hates this work from the bottom of his heart because he does not trust himself. He enters Jabavu’s cell taking himself to task for lack of sympathy, and at the first glance towards Jabavu he hardens himself. He has often seen such prisoners weeping like children and calling on their mothers, a sign which is deeply distasteful to him because he is English and despises such shows of emotion. He has seen them stubborn and indifferent and bitter. This is bad, but better than the weeping. He has also, and very often, seen them as Jabavu is, silent, motionless, their eyes lacking sight. It is a condition he dislikes more than any other, because it is foreign to his own being. He has seen prisoners condemned to death as Jabavu is today; they are dead long before the noose goes round their neck. But Jabavu is not going to be hung, his offence is comparatively light, and so this despair is altogether irrational, and Mr. Tennent knows by experience that he is not equipped to deal with it.

  He seats himself on an uncomfortable chair that the warder has brought in, and wonders why he finds it hard to speak of God. Jabavu is not a Christian, as can be seen from his papers, but should that prevent a man of God from speaking of Him? After a long silence he says: “I can see that you are very unhappy. I should like to help you.”

  The words are flat and thin and weak, and Jabavu does not move.

  “You are in great trouble. But if you spoke of it, it might ease you.”

  Not a sound from Jabavu, and his eyes do not move.

  For the hundredth time Mr. Tennent thinks that it would be better if he resigned from this work and let one of his colleagues do it who do not think of better housing and bigger wages rather than of God. But he continues in his mild, patient voice: “Perhaps things are better than you think. You seem to be too unhappy for the trouble you are in. There will be only light charges against you. Housebreaking and being without proper employment, and that is not so serious.”

  Jabavu remains motionless.

  “There has been such a long delay in the case because of the number of people involved in it. Your accomplice, the man they call Jerry, has been denounced by his gang as the person who incited you to rob the Mizis’ house.”

  At the name Mizi, Jabavu stirs slightly, then remains still.

  “Jerry will be charged with organising the robbery, for carrying a knife, and for being in the city without proper employment/The police suspect he has been involved in many other things, but nothing can be proved. He will get a fairly heavy sentence—that is to say, he will if he is caught. They think he is on his way to Johannesburg. When they catch him he will be put in prison. They have also caught a coloured man who has been giving Africans, you among them, false employment. But this man is very ill in hospital and is not expected to live. As regards the other members of the gang, the police will charge them with being without proper employment, but that is all. There has been such a cloud of lies and countercharges that it has been a very difficult case for the police. But you must remember it is your first offence, and you are very young, and things will not go badly for you.”

  Silence from Jabavu. Then Mr. Tennent thinks: Why should I comfort this boy as if he were innocent? The police tell me they know him to have been involved with all kinds of wickedness, even if they cannot prove it. He changes his voice and says, sternly: “I am not saying the fact that you were known to be a member of a gang will not influence your sentence. You will have to pay the penalty for breaking the law. It is thought you may get a year in prison . . .”

  He stops, for he can see that if he said ten years it would be the same to Jabavu. He remains silent for some time, thinking, for he has a choice to make which is not easy. That morning Mr. Mizi came to his house and asked him if he intended to visit the prison. When he said Yes, Mr. Mizi asked him if he would take a letter to Jabavu. Now, it is against the rules to take letters to prisoners. Mr. Tennent has never broken the law. Also, he dislikes Mr. Mizi, because he dislikes all politics and politicians. He thinks Mr. Mizi is nothing but a loud-voiced, phrase-making demagogue out for power and self-glory. Yet he cannot disapprove of Mr. Mizi entirely, who asks nothing for his people but what he, Mr. Tennent, sincerely believes to be just. At first he refused to take the letter, then he stiffly said Yes, he would try . . . The letter is in his pocket now.

  At last he takes the letter from his pocket and says: “I have a letter for you.” Jabavu still does not move.

>   “You have friends waiting to help you,” he says, loudly, trying to make his words pierce Jabavu’s apathy. Jabavu lifts his eyes. After a long pause he says: “What friends?”

  It gives Mr. Tennent a shock to hear his voice, after such a silence. “It is from Mr. Mizi,” he says stiffly.

  Jabavu snatches it, scrambles up and stands under the light that falls from the small, high window. He tears off the envelope, and it falls to the floor. Mr. Tennent picks it up and says: “I am not really supposed to give you letters,” and understands that his voice sounds angry. And this is unjust, for it is his own responsibility that he agreed. He does not like injustice, and he controls his voice and says: “Read it quickly and then give it back to me. That is what Mr. Mizi asked.”