The Sun Between Their Feet

by Doris Lessing

  No reply, so I let an editorial interval elapse and wrote again, and I got a very correct letter back. Well phrased. Polite. But not just that, it took me an hour to work out the handwriting – it was in a sort of Gothic print, each letter a work of art, like a medieval manuscript. But all he said, in that beautiful black art-writing was: he was very well, he hoped I was very well, the weather was good, except the rains were late, his Tantie Gertie was dead, and he was running the store. ‘Jou vriend, Johannes Potgieter.’

  Right. Goed. I was taking a trip to Joburg so I wrote and said I’d drop in at Blagspruit on my way back and I got another Manu Script, or Missal, saying he hoped to see me, and he would prepare Esther for my coming. I thought, he’s married, poor kerel, and it was the first time I’d thought of him as anything but a born bachelor, and I was right -because when I’d done with Joburg, not a moment too soon, and driven down to the Orange Free, and arrived on the doorstep, there was Hans, but not a sign of a wife and Esther turned out to be – but first I take pleasure in telling you that the beautiful brown-eyed poet with his noble brow and pale dimpled skin was bald, he has a tonsure, I swear it; and he’s fat, sort of smooth pale fat. He’s like a monk, lard-coloured and fat and smooth. Esther is the cook, or rather, his jailer. She’s a Zulu, a great fat woman and I swear she put the fear of God into me before I even got into the house. Tantie Gertie’s house is a square brick four-roomed shack, you know the kind, with an iron roof and verandas – well, what you’d expect in Blagspruit. And Esther stood about six feet high in a white apron and a white doekie and she held a lamp up in one great black fist and looked into my face and sighed and went off into her kitchen singing Rock of Ages. Ja, I promise you. And I looked at Hans, and all he said was: ‘It’s okay, man, she likes you, come in.’

  She gave us a great supper of roast mutton and pumpkin fritters and samp, and then some preserved fruit. She stood over us, arms folded, as we ate, and when Johannes left some mutton fat, she said in her mellow hymn-singing voice: ‘Waste not, want not, Master Johannes.’ And he ate it all up. Ja. She told me I should have some more peaches for my health, but I defied her and I felt as guilty as a small kicker, and I could see Hans eyeing me down the table and wondering where I got the nerve. She lives in the kia at the back, one small room with four children by various fathers, but no man, because God is more than enough for her now, you can see, with all those kids and Hans to bring up the right way. Auntie’s store is a Drapery and General Goods in the main street, called Gertie’s Store, and Hans was running it with a Coloured man. But I heard Esther with my own ears at supper saying to his bowed bald shamed head: ‘Master Johannes, I heard from the cook at the Predikant’s house today that the dried peaches have got worms in them.’ And Hans said: ‘Okay, Esther, I’ll send them up some of the new stock tomorrow.’

  Right. We spent all that evening talking and he was the same old Hans, you remember how he used to sit, saying not a blerry word, smiling that sweet dimpled smile of his, listening, listening, and then he’d ask a question, remember? Well, do you? Because it’s only just now I’m beginning to remember. People’d be talking about, I don’t know what, the Nats or the weather or the grape-crop, anything, and just as you’d start to get nervous because he never said anything he’d lean forward and start questioning, terribly serious, earnest, about some detail, something not quite central, if you know what I mean. He’d lean forward, smiling, smiling, and he’d say: ‘You really mean that, it rained all morning? It rained all morning, is that the truth?’ That’s right you’d say, a bit uneasy, and he’d say, shaking his head, God, man, it rained all morning, you say … And then there’d be a considerable silence till things picked up again. And half an hour later he’d say: ‘You really mean it, the hanepoort grapes are good this year?’

  Right. We drank a good bit of brandewyn that night, but in a civilized way, you know: Would you like another little drop, Martin, Ja, just a small tot, Hans, thank you, but we got pretty pickled, and when I woke Sunday morning, I felt like death, but Esther was setting down a tray of tea by my bed, all dressed up in her Sunday hat and her black silk saying: ‘Goeie môre, Master du Preez, it’s nearly time for church,’ and I nearly said: ‘I’m not a churchgoer, Esther,’ but I thought better of it, because it came to me, can it be possible, has our Hans turned a God-fearing man in Blagspruit? So I said, ‘Goed, Esther, thanks for telling me, and now just get out of here so that I can get dressed.’ Otherwise she’d have dressed me, I swear it. And she gave me a majestic nod, knowing that God had spoken through her to send me to church, sinner that I was and stinking of cheap dop from the night before.

  Right. Johannes and I went to Kerk, he in a black Sunday suit, if you’d believe such a thing, and saying: ‘Good morning, Mr Stein, goeie môre, Mrs Van Esslin,’ a solid and respected member of the congregation and, I thought, poor kerel, there but for the grace of God go I, if I had to live in this god-forsaken dorp stuck in the middle of the Orange Free State. And he looked like death after the brandewyn, and so did I, and we sat there swaying and sweating in that blerry little church through a sermon an hour and a half long, while all the faithful gave us nasty curious looks. Then we had a cold lunch, Esther having been worshipping at the kaffir church down in the Location, and we slept it all off and woke covered with flies and sweating, and it was as hot as hell, which is what Blagspruit is, hell. And he’d been there ten years, man, ten years …

  Right. It is Esther’s afternoon off, and Johannes says he will make us some tea, but I see he is quite lost without her, so I say, give me a glass of water, and let’s get out from under this iron, that’s all I ask. He looks surprised, because his hide is hardened to it, but off we go, through the dusty little garden full of marigolds and zinnias, you know those sun-baked gardens with the barbed wire fences and the gates painted dried-blood colour in those dorps stuck in the middle of the veld, enough to make you get drunk even to think of them, but Johannes is sniffing at the marigolds, which stink like turps, and he sticks an orange zinnia in his lapel, and says: ‘Esther likes gardening.’ And there we go along the main street, saying good afternoon to the citizens, for a half a mile, then we’re out in the veld again, just the veld. And we wander about, kicking up the dust and watching the sun sink, because both of us have just one idea, which is: how soon can we decently start sundowning?

  Then there was a nasty stink on the air, and it came from a small bird impaled on a thorn on a thorn tree which was a butcher-bird’s cache, have you ever seen one? Every blerry thorn had a beetle or a worm or something stuck on it, and it made me feel pretty sick, coming on top of everything, and I was just picking up a stone to throw at the damned thorn-tree, to spite the butcher-bird, when I saw Hans staring at a lower part of this tree. On a long black thorn was a great big brown beetle, and it was waving all its six legs and its two feelers in rhythm, trying to claw the thorn out of its middle, or so it looked, and it was writhing and wriggling, so that at last it fell off the thorn, which was at right angles from the soil, and it landed on its back, still waving its legs, trying to up itself. At which Hans bent down to look at it for some time, his two monk’s hands on his upper thighs, his bald head sweating and glowing red in the last sunlight. Then he bent down, picked up the beetle and stuck it back on the thorn. Carefully, you understand, so that the thorn went back into the hole it had already made, you could see he was trying not to hurt the beetle. I just stood and gaped, like a domkop, and I remembered for some reason how one used to feel when he leaned forward and said, all earnest and involved: ‘You say the oranges are no good this year? Honestly, is that really true?’ Anyway, I said: ‘Hans, man, for God’s sake!’ and then he looked at me, and he said, reproachfully, ‘The ants would have killed it, just look!’ Well, the ground was swarming with ants of one kind or another, so there was logic in it, but I said: ‘Hans, let’s drink, man, let’s drink.’

  Well, it was Sunday, and no bars open. I took a last look at the beetle, the black thorn through its oozing middle
, waving its black legs at the setting sun, and I said: ‘Back home, Hans, and to hell with Esther, we’re going to get drunk.’

  Esther was in the kitchen, putting out cold meat and tomatoes, and I said: ‘Esther, you can take the evening off.’

  She said: ‘Master Hans, I have had all the Sunday afternoon off talking to Sister Mary.’ Hans looked helpless at me, and I said: ‘Esther, I’m giving you the evening off, good night.’

  And Hans said, stuttering and stammering. ‘That’s right, Esther, I’ll give you the evening off. Good night, Esther.’

  She looked at him. Then at me. Hey, what a woman; hey, what a queen, man! She said, with dignity: ‘Good night, Mr Johannes; good night, Mr du Preez.’ Then she wiped her hands free of evil on her white apron, and she strode off, singing All Things Bright and Beautiful, and I tell you we felt as if we weren’t good enough to wash Esther’s broekies, and that’s the truth.

  Goed. We got out the brandy, never mind about the cold meat and the tomatoes, and about an hour later I reached my point at last, which was, what about the poems, and the reason I’d taken so long I was scared he’d say: ‘Take a look at Blagspruit, man, take a look, is this the place for poems, Martin?’ But when I asked, he leaned forward and stared at me, all earnest and intent, then he turned his head carefully to the right, to see if the door into the kitchen was shut, but it wasn’t; and then left at the window, and that was open too, and then past me at the door to the veranda. Then he got up on tiptoes and very carefully shut all three, and then he drew the curtains. It gave me the shriks, man, I can tell you. Then he went to a great old black chest and took out a Manuscript, because it was all in the beautiful black difficult writing and gave it to me to read. And I sat and slowly worked it out, letter by letter, while he sat opposite, sweating and totting, and giving fearful looks over his shoulders.

  What was it? Well, I was drunk, for one thing, and Hans sitting there all frightened scared me, but it was good, it was good, I promise you. A kind of chronicle of Blagspruit it was, the lives of the citizens – well, need I elaborate, since the lives of citizens are the same everywhere in the world, but worse in Suid Afrika, and worse a million times in Blagspruit. The Manuscript gave off a stink of church and right-doing, with the sin and the evil underneath, it had a medieval stink to it, naturally enough, for what is worse than the Kerk in this our Land? – but I’m saying this to you, remember, and I never said it, but what is worse than the stink of the Kerk and the God-fearing in this our feudal land?

  But the poem. As far as I can remember, because I was full as a tick, it was a sort of prose chronicle that led up to and worked into the poems, you couldn’t tell where they began or ended. The prose was stiff and old-fashioned, and formal, monk’s language, and the poems, too. But I knew when I read it it was the best I’d read in years – since I read those poems of his ten years before, man, not since then. And don’t forget, God help me, I’m an editor now, and I read poems day and night, and when I come on something like Hans’s poems that night I have nothing to say but – Goed.

  Right. I was working away there an hour or more because of that damned black ornamental script, then I put it down and I said: ‘Hans, can I ask you a question?’ And he looked this way and that over his shoulder first, then leaned forward, the lamplight shining on his pate, and he asked in a low trembling sinner’s voice: ‘What do you want to ask me, Martin?’

  I said, ‘Why this complicated handwriting? What for? It’s beautiful, but why this monkey’s puzzle?’

  And he lowered his voice and said: ‘It’s so that Esther can’t read it.’

  I said: ‘And what of it, Hans? Why not? Give me some more brandewyn and tell me.’

  He said: ‘She’s a friend of the Predikant’s cook, and her sister Mary works in the Mayor’s kitchen.’

  I saw it all. I was drunk, so I saw it. I got up, and I said: ‘Hans, you’re right. You’re right a thousand times. If you’re going to write stuff like this, as true and as beautiful as God and all his angels, then Esther mustn’t read it. But why don’t you let me take this back with me and print it in Onwards?’

  He went white and looked as if I might knife him there and then like totsi. He grabbed the manuscript from me and held it against his fat chest, and he said: ‘They mustn’t see it.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, understanding him completely.

  ‘It’s dangerous keeping it here,’ he said, darting fearful looks all around.

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ I said, and I sat down with a bump in my rimpie chair, and I said: ‘Ja, if they found that, Hans …’

  They’d kill me,’ he said.

  I saw it, completely.

  I was drunk. He was drunk. We put the manuscript boekie on the table and we put our arms around each other and we wept for the citizens of Blagspruit. Then we lit the hurricane-lamp in the kitchen, and he took his boekie under his arm, and we tiptoed out into the moonlight that stank of marigolds, and out we went down the main street, all dark as the pit now because it was after twelve and the citizens were asleep, and we went staggering down a tarmac street that shone in the moonlight between low dark houses and out into the veld. There we looked sorrowfully at each other and wept some sad brandy tears, and right in front of us, the devil aiding us, was a thorn-tree. All virgin it was, its big black spikes lifted up and shining in the devil’s moon. And we wept a long time more, and we tore out the pages from his manuscript and we made them into little screws of paper and we stuck them all over the thorns and when there were none left, we sat under the thorn-tree in the moonlight, the black spiky thorns making thin purplish shadows all over us and over the white sand. Then we wept for the state of our country and the state of poetry. We drank a lot more brandy, and the ants came after it and us, so we staggered back down the gleaming sleeping main street of Blagspruit, and that’s all I remember until Esther was standing over me with a tin tray that had a teapot, teacup, sugar and some condensed milk, and she was saying: ‘Master du Preez, where is Master Hans?’

  I saw the seven o’clock sun outside the window, and I remembered everything and I sat up and I said: ‘My God!’

  And Esther said, ‘God has not been in this house since half past five on Saturday last.’ And went out.

  Right. I got dressed, and went down the main street, drawing looks from the Monday morning citizens, all of whom had probably been watching us staggering along last night from behind their black-drawn curtains. I reached the veld and there was Hans. A wind had got up, a hot dust-devilish wind, and it blew about red dust and bits of grit, and leaves, and dead grass into the blue sky, and those pale dry bushes that leave their roots and go bouncing and twirling all over the empty sand, like dervishes, round and around, and then up and around, and there was Hans, letting out yelps and cries and shouts, and he was chasing about after screws of paper that were whirling around among the dust and stuff.

  I helped him. The thorn-tree had three squirls of paper tugging and blowing from spikes of black thorn, so I collected those, and we ran after the blowing white bits that had the black beautiful script on them, and we got perhaps a third back. Then we sat under the thorn-tree, the hard, sharp black shadows over us and the sand, and we watched a dust-devil whirling columns of yellow sand and his poems up and off into the sky.

  I said: ‘But, Hans, you could write them down again, couldn’t you? You couldn’t have forgotten them surely?’

  And he said: ‘But, Martin, anyone can read them now, don’t you see that, man? Esther could come out here next afternoon off, and pick any one of those poems up off the earth and read it. Or suppose the predikant or the mayor got their hands on them?’

  Then I understood. I promise you, it had never crossed my domkop mind until that moment. I swear it. I simply sat there sweating out guilt and brandy, and I looked at that poor madman, and then I remembered back ten years and I thought: You idiot. You fool.

  Then at last I got intelligent and I said: ‘But, Hans, even if Esther and the predika
nt and the mayor did come out here and pick up your poems, like leaves, off the bushes, they couldn’t understand one word, because they are written in that slim black script you worked out for yourself.’

  I saw his poor crazy face get more happy, and he said: ‘You think so, Martin? Really? You really think so?’

  I said: ‘Ja, it’s the truth.’ And he got all happy and safe, while I thought of those poems whirling around for ever, or until the next rainstorm, around the blue sky with the dust and the bits of shining grass.

  And I said: ‘Anyway, at the best, only perhaps a thousand or two thousand people would understand that beautiful boekie. Try to look at it that way, Hans, it might make you feel better.’

  By this time he looked fine, he was smiling and cheered up.

  Right.

  We got up and dusted each other off, and I took him home to Esther. I asked him to let me take the poems we’d rescued back to publish in Onwards but he got desperate again and said: ‘No, no, do you want to kill me? Do you want them to kill me? You’re my friend, Martin, you can’t do that.’

  So I told Esther that she had a great man in her charge, through whom Heaven Itself spoke, and she was right to take such care of him. But she merely nodded her queenly white-doecked head and said: ‘Goodbye, Master du Preez, and may God be with you.’

  So I came home to Kapstaad.

  A week ago I got a letter from Hans, but I didn’t see at once that it was from him, it was in ordinary writing, like yours or mine, but rather unformed and wild, and it said: ‘I am leaving this place. They know me now. They look at me. I’m going North to the river. Don’t tell Esther. Jou vriend, Johannes Potgieter.’

  Right.

  Jou vriend,

  Martin du Preez.

  Hunger