African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  “If I were you,” said Mr. Grant, “I’d get the whole of the lands on either side of the vlei under mealies the first season. Rich has never had it under cultivation, and the soil’d go sixteen bags to the acre for the first couple of seasons.”

  “Yes, I’ve been thinking that’s what I should do.”

  She heard the sounds of tea being brought in.

  Mr. Rooyen said to her through the door: “Like a cup?” but she shook her head. She was thinking that if she were Maureen she’d fix up the house for him. Her father’s next remark was therefore no surprise to her.

  “Thought of getting married, Rooyen?”

  He said bitterly: “Take a look at this house, Mr. Grant.”

  “Well you could build on a couple of rooms for about thirty pounds, I reckon; I’11 lend you my building boy. And a wife’d get it all spick and span in no time.”

  Soon the two men came out, and Mr. Rooyen stood on the verandah as she and her father got into the car and drove off. She waved to him, politely, with a polite smile.

  She waited for her father to say something, but although he gave her several doubtful looks, he did not. She said: “Mr. Rooyen’s in love with a girl called Maureen.”

  “Did he say so?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Well,” he said, talking to her, as was his habit, one grown person to another, “I’d say it was time he got married.”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything all right?” he inquired, having worked out exactly the right words to use.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Good.”

  That season Rich Mitchell leased a couple of miles of his big vlei to Mr. Rooyen, with a promise of sale later. Tobacco Paynter’s wife got a governess from England, called Miss Betty Blunt, and almost at once Mr. Rooyen and she were engaged. Mrs. Paynter complained that she could never keep a governess longer than a couple of months, they always got married; but she couldn’t have been too angry about it, because she laid on a big wedding for them, and all the district was there. The girl was asked if she would be a bridesmaid, but she very politely refused. On the track to the station there was a new signpost pointing along a well-used road which said: THE BIG VLEI FARM. C. ROOYEN.

  The Story of Two Dogs

  GETTING a new dog turned out to be more difficult than we thought, and for reasons rooted deep in the nature of our family. For what, on the face of it, could have been easier to find than a puppy once it had been decided: “Jock needs a companion, otherwise he’ll spend his time with those dirty Kaffir dogs in the compound”? All the farms in the district had dogs who bred puppies of the most desirable sort. All the farm compounds owned miserable beasts kept hungry so that they would be good hunters for their meat-starved masters; though often enough puppies born to the cage-ribbed bitches from this world of mud huts were reared in white houses and turned out well. Jacob our builder heard we wanted another dog, and came up with a lively puppy on the end of a bit of rope. But we tactfully refused. The thin flea-bitten little object was not good enough for Jock, my mother said; though we children were only too ready to take it in.

  Jock was a mongrel himself, a mixture of Alsatian, Rhodesian ridgeback, and some other breed—terrier?—that gave him ears too cocky and small above a long melancholy face. In short, he was nothing to boast of, outwardly: his qualities were all intrinsic or bestowed on him by my mother who had given this animal her heart when my brother went off to boarding school.

  In theory Jock was my brother’s dog. Yet why give a dog to a boy at that moment when he departs for school and will be away from home two-thirds of the year? In fact my brother’s dog was his substitute; and my poor mother, whose children were always away being educated, because we were farmers, and farmers’ children had no choice but to go to the cities for their schooling—my poor mother caressed Jock’s too-small intelligent ears and crooned: “There, Jock! There, old boy! There, good dog, yes, you’re a good dog, Jock, you’re such a good dog. . . .” While my father said, uncomfortably: “For goodness’ sake, old girl, you’ll ruin him, that isn’t a house pet, he’s not a lapdog, he’s a farm dog.” To which my mother said nothing, but her face put on a most familiar look of misunderstood suffering, and she bent it down close so that the flickering red tongue just touched her cheeks, and sang to him: “Poor old Jock then, yes, you’re a poor old dog, you’re not a rough farm dog, you’re a good dog, and you’re not strong, no you’re delicate.”

  At this last word my brother protested; my father protested; and so did I. All of us, in our different ways, had refused to be “delicate”—had escaped from being “delicate”—and we wished to rescue a perfectly strong and healthy young dog from being forced into invalidism, as we all, at different times, had been. Also of course we all (and we knew it and felt guilty about it) were secretly pleased that Jock was now absorbing the force of my mother’s pathetic need for something “delicate” to nurse and protect.

  Yet there was something in the whole business that was a reproach to us. When my mother bent her sad face over the animal, stroking him with her beautiful white hands on which the rings had grown too large, and said: “There, good dog, yes Jock, you’re such a gentleman”—well, there was something in all this that made us, my father, my brother and myself, need to explode with fury, or to take Jock away and make him run over the farm like the tough young brute he was, or go away ourselves forever so that we didn’t have to hear the awful yearning intensity in her voice. Because it was entirely our fault that note was in her voice at all; if we had allowed ourselves to be delicate, and good, or even gentlemen or ladies, there would have been no need for Jock to sit between my mother’s knees, his loyal noble head on her lap, while she caressed and yearned and suffered.

  It was my father who decided there must be another dog, and for the expressed reason that otherwise Jock would be turned into a “sissy.” (At this word, reminder of a hundred earlier battles, my brother flushed, looked sulky, and went right out of the room.) My mother would not hear of another dog until her Jock took to sneaking off to the farm compound to play with the Kaffir dogs. “Oh you bad dog, Jock,” she said sorrowfully, “playing with those nasty dirty dogs, how could you, Jock!” And he would playfully, but in an agony of remorse, snap and lick at her face, while she bent the whole force of her inevitably betrayed self over him, crooning: “How could you, oh how could you, Jock?”

  So there must be a new puppy. And since Jock was (at heart, despite his temporary lapse) noble and generous and above all well-bred, his companion must also possess these qualities. And which dog, where in the world, could possibly be good enough? My mother turned down a dozen puppies; but Jock was still going off to the compound, slinking back to gaze soulfully into my mother’s eyes. This new puppy was to be my dog. I decided this: if my brother owned a dog, then it was only fair that I should. But my lack of force in claiming this puppy was because I was in the grip of abstract justice only. The fact was I didn’t want a good noble and well-bred dog. I didn’t know what I did want, but the idea of such a dog bored me. So I was content to let my mother turn down puppies, provided she kept her terrible maternal energy on Jock, and away from me.

  Then the family went off for one of our long visits in another part of the country, driving from farm to farm to stop at night, or a day, or a meal, with friends. To the last place we were invited for the weekend. A distant cousin of my father, “a Norfolk man” (my father was from Essex), had married a woman who had nursed in the war (First World War) with my mother. They now lived in a small brick and iron house surrounded by granite kopjes that erupted everywhere from thick bush. They were as isolated as any people I’ve known, eighty miles from the nearest railway station. As my father said, they were “not suited,” for they quarrelled or sent each other to Coventry all the weekend. However, it was not until much later that I thought about the pathos of these two people, living alone on a minute pension in the middle of the bush, and “not suited”; for that weekend I
was in love.

  It was night when we arrived, about eight in the evening, and an almost full moon floated heavy and yellow above a stark granite-bouldered kopje. The bush around was black and low and silent, except that the crickets made a small incessant din. The car drew up outside a small boxlike structure whose iron roof glinted off moonlight. As the engine stopped, the sound of crickets swelled up, the moonlight’s cold came in a breath of fragrance to our faces; and there was the sound of a mad wild yapping. Behold, around the corner of the house came a small black wriggling object that hurled itself towards the car, changed course almost on touching it, and hurtled off again, yapping in a high delirious yammering which, while it faded behind the house, continued faintly, our ears, or at least mine, straining after it.

  “Take no notice of that puppy,” said our host, the man from Norfolk. “It’s been stark staring mad with the moon every night this last week.”

  We went into the house, were fed, were looked after; I was put to bed so that the grownups could talk freely. All the time came the mad high yapping. In my tiny bedroom I looked out onto a space of flat white sand that reflected the moon between the house and the farm buildings, and there hurtled a mad wild puppy, crazy with joy of life, or moonlight, weaving back and forth, round and round, snapping at its own black shadow and tripping over its own clumsy feet—like a drunken moth around a candle flame, or like . . . like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard of since.

  The moon, large and remote and soft, stood up over the trees, the empty white sand, the house which had unhappy human beings in it; and a mad little dog yapping and beating its course of drunken joyous delirium. That, of course, was my puppy; and when Mr. Barnes came out from the house saying: “Now, now, come now, you lunatic animal . . .” finally almost throwing himself on the crazy creature, to lift it in his arms still yapping and wriggling and flapping around like a fish, so that he could carry it to the packing case that was its kennel, I was already saying, as anguished as a mother watching a stranger handle her child: Careful now, careful, that’s my dog.

  Next day, after breakfast, I visited the packing case. Its white wood oozed out resin that smelled tangy in hot sunlight, and its front was open and spilling out soft yellow straw. On the straw a large beautiful black dog lay with her head on outstretched fore-paws. Beside her a brindled pup lay on its fat back, its four paws sprawled every which way, its eyes rolled up, as ecstatic with heat and food and laziness as it had been the night before from the joy of movement. A crust of mealie porridge was drying on its shining black lips that were drawn slightly back to show perfect milk teeth. His mother kept her eyes on him, but her pride was dimmed with sleep and heat.

  I went inside to announce my spiritual ownership of the puppy. They were all around the breakfast table. The man from Norfolk was swapping boyhood reminiscences (shared in space, not time) with my father. His wife, her eyes still red from the weeping that had followed a night quarrel, was gossiping with my mother about the various London hospitals where they had ministered to the wounded of the war they had (apparently so enjoy ably) shared.

  My mother at once said: “Oh my dear, no, not that puppy, didn’t you see him last night? We’ll never train him.”

  The man from Norfolk said I could have him with pleasure.

  My father said he didn’t see what was wrong with the dog, if a dog was healthy that was all that mattered: my mother dropped her eyes forlornly, and sat silent.

  The man from Norfolk’s wife said she couldn’t bear to part with the silly little thing, goodness knows there was little enough pleasure in her life.

  The atmosphere of people at loggerheads being familiar to me, it was not necessary for me to know why they disagreed, or in what ways, or what criticisms they were going to make about my puppy. I only knew that inner logics would in due course work themselves out and the puppy would be mine. I left the four people to talk about their differences through a small puppy, and went to worship the animal, who was now sitting in a patch of shade beside the sweet-wood-smelling packing case, its dark brindled coat glistening, with dark wet patches on it from its mother’s ministering tongue. His own pink tongue absurdly stuck out between white teeth, as if he had been too careless or lazy to withdraw it into its proper place under his equally pink wet palate. His brown buttony beautiful eyes . . . but enough, he was an ordinary mongrelly puppy.

  Later I went back to the house to find out how the battle balanced: my mother had obviously won my father over, for he said he thought it was wiser not to have that puppy: “Bad blood tells, you know.”

  The bad blood was from the father, whose history delighted my fourteen-year-old imagination. This district being wild, scarcely populated, full of wild animals, even leopards and lions, the four policemen at the police station had a tougher task than in places nearer town; and they had bought half a dozen large dogs to (a) terrorise possible burglars around the police station itself and (b) surround themselves with an aura of controlled animal savagery. For the dogs were trained to kill if necessary. One of these dogs, a big ridgeback, had “gone wild.” He had slipped his tether at the station and taken to the bush, living by himself on small buck, hares, birds, even stealing farmers’ chickens. This dog, whose proud lonely shape had been a familiar one to farmers for years, on moonlit nights, or in grey dawns and dusks, standing aloof from human warmth and friendship, had taken Stella, my puppy’s mother, off with him for a week of sport and hunting. She simply went away with him one morning; the Barneses had seen her go; had called after her; she had not even looked back. A week later she returned home at dawn and gave a low whine outside their bedroom window, saying: I’m home; and they woke to see their errant Stella standing erect in the paling moonlight, her nose pointed outwards and away from them towards a great powerful dog who seemed to signal to her with his slightly moving tail before fading into the bush. Mr. Barnes fired some futile shots into the bush after him. Then they both scolded Stella who in due time produced seven puppies, in all combinations of black, brown and gold. She was no pure-bred herself, though of course her owners thought she was, or ought to be, being their dog. The night the puppies were born, the man from Norfolk and his wife heard a sad wail or cry, and arose from their beds to see the wild police dog bending his head in at the packing-case door. All the bush was flooded with a pinkish-gold dawn light, and the dog looked as if he had an aureole of gold around him. Stella was half wailing, half growling her welcome, or protest, or fear at his great powerful reappearance and his thrusting muzzle so close to her seven helpless pups. They called out, and he turned his outlaw’s head to the window where they stood side by side in striped pyjamas and embroidered pink silk. He put back his head and howled, he howled, a mad wild sound that gave them gooseflesh, so they said: but I did not understand that until years later when Bill the puppy “went wild” and I saw him that day on the antheap howling his pain of longing to an empty listening world.

  The father of her puppies did not come near Stella again; but a month later he was shot dead at another farm, fifty miles away, coming out of a chicken run with a fine white Leghorn in his mouth; and by that time she had only one pup left, they had drowned the rest. It was bad blood, they said, no point in preserving it, they had only left her that one pup out of pity.

  I said not a word as they told this cautionary tale, merely preserved the obstinate calm of someone who knows she will get her own way. Was right on my side? It was. Was I owed a dog? I was. Should anybody but myself choose my dog? No, but . . . very well then, I had chosen. I chose this dog. I chose it. Too late, I had chosen it.

  Three days and three nights we spent at the Barneses’ place. The days were hot and slow and full of sluggish emotions; and the two dogs slept in the packing case. At night, the four people stayed in the living room, a small brick place heated unendurably by the paraffin lamp whose oily yellow glow attracted moths and beetles in a perpetual whirling halo of small moving bodies. They talked, and I listened for the mad far yapping, and then I crep
t out into the cold moonlight. On the last night of our stay the moon was full, a great perfect white ball, its history marked on a face that seemed close enough to touch as it floated over the dark cricket-singing bush. And there on the white sand yapped and danced the crazy puppy, while his mother, the big beautiful animal, sat and watched, her intelligent yellow eyes slightly anxious as her muzzle followed the erratic movements of her child, the child of her dead mate from the bush. I crept up beside Stella, sat on the still-warm cement beside her, put my arm around her soft furry neck, and my head beside her alert moving head. I adjusted my breathing so that my rib cage moved up and down beside hers, so as to be closer to the warmth of her barrelly furry chest, and together we turned our eyes from the great staring floating moon to the tiny black hurtling puppy who shot in circles from near us, so near he all but crashed into us, to two hundred yards away where he just missed the wheels of the farm waggon. We watched, and I felt the chill of moonlight deepen on Stella’s fur, and on my own silk skin, while our ribs moved gently up and down together, and we waited until the man from Norfolk came to first shout, then yell, then fling himself on the mad little dog and shut him up in the wooden box where yellow bars of moonlight fell into black dog-smelling shadow. “There now, Stella girl, you go in with your puppy,” said the man, bending to pat her head as she obediently went inside. She used her soft nose to push her puppy over. He was so exhausted that he fell and lay, his four legs stretched out and quivering like a shot dog, his breath squeezed in and out of him in small regular wheezy pants like whines. And so I left them, Stella and her puppy, to go to my bed in the little brick house which seemed literally crammed with hateful emotions. I went to sleep, thinking of the hurtling little dog, now at last asleep with exhaustion, his nose pushed against his mother’s breathing black side, the slits of yellow moonlight moving over him through the boards of fragrant wood.