The Conservationist (18 page)

— Is there a dance? —

And all the to-and-fro, comfortable, assenting noises come with the affirmation, Yes, there’s a dance. They smile shinily, greased by excitement or effort. God knows how far they’ve walked.

Perhaps there’s some ceremony, initiation or something, that would provide entertainment. — What’s the dance for? —

— Someone he was sick and now he’s all right. Yes, master. —

— To say thanks because he is better? —

The two of them laugh, flexing their knees to applaud the farmer’s quickness; their unexpected welcome to the farm. — Yes, sir — — Yes, yes, he’s coming better. Yes. —

— And plenty beer — —

More laughter. The one flourishes his stick and peers jokingly into the car. — If you got beer for us we can be very pleased, master. -

Everyone is laughing, except the boy, he doesn’t manage more than a distant grin.

- D‘you like to go along and have a look at this ‘dance’? —

— No, no, it’s embarrassing. —

He means to avoid using this tone for the few hours he’s going to be spending with him, but — For God’s sake - why embarrassing? —

The face goes through the contortions of taking a breath, looking for where to begin, beginning again. — Because it is, that’s why. It’s a private thing. Nothing to do with us. —

— Nonsense. They’d love an audience. Why shouldn’t dancers love an audience. — But he lets the subject sink down under silence between them as they drive slowly, as he always does once he’s on his own property, almost as if he were already strolling on foot, looking alertly about to see how things are. Some young bullocks being let out of a paddock buck and frolic, and they are both amused. The little boy of a few years ago says - Gee, I wonder how long you’d be able to stick on when they come out like that. —

— Well try, if you don’t mind risking a broken bone or two. But you wouldn’t have far to fall. - The bullocks are only half-grown and his legs are so long now.

-And here we are. - He recognizes old landmarks, returned from the pilgrimage with begging bowl, thirty years off, down in the Swakop river bed in an ancient jeep breaking through tamarisk and wild tobacco with yellow flowers.

Here we are. Along with the main farm buildings which are grouped around, this remains the centre of the farm’s existence, empty as the house is, shut up as usual. It’s here that people tend to hang about on one piece of business or another. There are two ugly ones with stocky greased legs stuck out before them in the sun against the workshop wall. They wear black berets drawn down straight to their ears. They have the stolidity of women sitting for many hours. There’s a group of four or five others, more of them come for the dance, and they’re standing around, a man in a white, high-collared jacket (doctor’s, waiter’s?) and various females draped in blankets. And there’s Jacobus - Jacobus’s going through the whole unavoidable ritual of seeing you at last, after so long, not since the Easter holidays ...?

— I was here at half-term in May —

— Were you? —

So you were, but time-changes, Japan, South America, Jamaica, lost hours in planes, they make it much longer. Jacobus first stood up straight from whatever he’s tinkering with, he received the sun of your presence full in the face, he exposed himself in a broken, stinking-toothed smile and lifted a hailing palm that he’s holding up still, a standard, as he approaches. You cannot escape Jacobus, you can’t disappear under the seat or look the other way out the window or pick at your dirty thumbnail. He greets you, he thinks the world of you, he’s crowning you with a laurel of thorns whether you accept it or not.

— I’m happy for this day. This day! Why you don’t come long, long time, Terry? Terry. — The name is handled lovingly, admiringly, since it’s conjured up in the flesh, there in the car.

— think I’m never see you, my young baas - he’s very very good, this young baas, you know? —

— I know. I know, Jacobus, you like him- Smiling, Jacobus and I; kidding the old devil.

- And he’s growing too strong! Coming big man now! Yes, I’m very very please. -

Out of the car, looking down over himself under this regard, this praise, smiling, snickering with shame under it, staring at the bare Namib-burned feet with gingerish hairs shining on the big toes, at the ragged jeans, the sweat-shirt washed colourless, the big hands with the snake ring, as if this —
self
— is something he picked up somewhere, any old thing.

Not for Jacobus. For Jacobus you are my son. You go to school. You will learn everything. You will have everything. A car. A house. A farm to come to on Sundays. Everything I have.

— From pig-iron, she says (yes) enviously. If I had your money -

You will have my money. There is nothing you can do about it: — He’s grown up, now, ay, Jacobus. —

— Yes. Yes. Very good. I’m happy for see. — The welling of enthusiasm settles at high watermark; Jacobus, looking down from it, always vigilant in his own interest no matter what a loyal old devil he seems to be, turns his attention — Those peoples they want ask they can come today -

— A big party on, ay? —

Jacobus can’t stop grinning fondly, distractedly, at the long blond hair and the quite respectable beginnings of the beard. — Yes. The wife of Phineas she’s want to be witch doctor — He giggles with what he anticipates will be white amusement at this. — She’s learn, and today is come big witch-doctor from there-there, in other side town. You know? He must see this and this, if she’s know how to do. — He has sidled right up close to his young baas, he puts his arm on his shoulder conspiratorially, he lowers his head, grimaces on those teeth with the effort of extreme secrecy, and draws his little group in with a whisper: — You — you mustn’t go in the barn there. Not in the barn. There’s - (he looks down under his dropped eyelids so that the visitors, a little way off, will not be able to learn anything from his expression) - there’s the goat inside there. -

Hunching your shoulders and looking at me, mouth pulled up at one corner, smiling, not wanting to offend, not knowing what he’s talking about. A goat?

— No, no. I’m tell you. Sshh. The witch-doctor he’s tell the people they must buy the goat. Then he’s put that goat away somewhere, somewhere, she don’t know where. Nobody must say her. Since three day she mustn’t go out, nobody must talk to her in her room there. She don’t see nothing. Then later on, she going to throw bones, everything, you know, and she must tell where is that goat. —

— And the dance? —

- Yes, sometime five or half-past. Everything’s coming ready.

The three have turned gradually to regard the visitors standing by, Jacobus casting a watchful eye over them as he does when taking a white man to inspect some particular group of cows in one of his paddocks. He certainly has a sense of attachment to the place; one could do a lot worse, although it’s business-lunch exaggeration to say (he sometimes hears himself) his old boy does better than any white manager. What this really means is that they’re more honest than any white you’re likely to get in a menial yet responsible position. He may filch a bag of mealie-meal for perks but why the hell not, who wouldn’t — but he hasn’t the craft to crook you. There is laughter when - frankly confidential - there comes the observation that you can always trust a man who can’t write not to keep a double set of books. The chief accountant appreciates that one most.

The man in the white coat (yes, now that we’ve heard the witch-doctor story it definitely looks surgical, ay, Terry) holds his arms respectfully down across his body in a V whose base is the hat he removed as soon as the car drove into the yard. He bows: —
‘Nkos’,
‘
Nkos
’. —

Jacobus makes a sweeping gesture, and says, now loudly — They want to go to the compound, they asking —

The man’s greeting is acknowledged; the women neither greet nor expect to be greeted, they do not see themselves at all in the eyes of the white man and white boy. — All right. Tell them all right. -

It’s true those feet are so toughened he trails along (just like one of them) without any apparent discomfort while Jacobus presents his usual weekly crop of problems; he’s smoking, not possible to say if he’s taking any notice of what’s going on, until Jacobus demonstrates what has gone wrong with the disc-plough. Then he jack-knifes down on his haunches and the blond, not-too-clean hair hides his face: — But look at this. It’s bust off here, something’s missing. —

Jacobus never stops his running commentary of explanation and the two of them seem to understand each other. Rising at last, even the black face shows the darkening of the blood that suffuses both heads. The veins on his black forehead above that prominent frontal bone they have give him the appearance of frowning while he admires, encourages. — You too clever, Terry. Why you don’t come this time, holiday time? What is wrong you don’t want help us? —

You laugh. Laughing to please Jacobus.

— He went away, far away, to see my old home Jacobus. —

— But he’s coming Christmas time, yes. You come help us Christmas when the school is finish. Yes! —

— I want to plant another hundred trees along here this summer. —

He has his thumbs hooked in the diagonal front pockets of the jeans and he picks his way easily through puddles made in the road by the irrigation jets. — What kind? —

Tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk : the long, wavering squirts jerk round, changing direction under their own pressure; tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk.

A decision is made. The answer’s going to be unexpected, with the shadow of the fast-growing eucalyptus ahead. - Oaks. -

You don’t plant oaks for yourself but for those who come after.

But that is not our subject, apparently. The response that comes is a question. — You’re not going to Plet? —

Arms, staggering flailing arms, flowing sleeves of water; one trails suddenly over their faces, so that they smile at one another under the caress. Forced by irrigation the lucerne is green and thick, it’s as if summer were already here.

— I am not. I’m going to plant trees. Let the others catch the big fish and booze at the Christmas parties. -

What is it you want me to say now?

A-hah - you were thinking of going to the cottage at the sea, maybe, you could have had a good time this year, that’s true, soon seventeen, all those daughters of friends grown up just your age. But that means in January you’ll go into the army, that’s where you’ll be when the party’s over. What is it you want me to say? If you’re waiting for me to broach that subject, you’re mistaken - yet he doesn’t say anything, he speaks but he doesn’t say anything, he won’t bring it up himself.

At the compound sleeping women lie on the ground beside the ash-heap rolled like corpses in new blankets, right over their heads, brightly checked and fringed. There’s no child to be seen and their dogs seem to be shut away for once. — Looks more like the morning after, to me. But they probably walked all night to get here. —

He’s jogged ahead a bit; he turns — Oh the picnic place was burnt! —

— It’s all recovering now, you should’ve seen it a couple of weeks ago. —

There’s just time to go down there; it’ll take the best part of an hour to get to the airport. He’s fallen behind again. Down to the third pasture through the gate, and he closes it after them, struggling to get the hoop of wire back over the ant-eaten post with the goaded air of an action performed too many times without question. Why Namibia? The great thing was once Spain. You are not the first. It’s always been like that. Yes, it’s all been thought, what you’re thinking, a thousand times before. They went to fight in Greece, club-footed poet and the well-meaning romantic muddlers or freaks. They went off to Spain and lost the good cause and as a result today, despite the great loss to the country because a gipsy and her professor wouldn’t dream of going there any more than they’d consider enjoying themselves in what she calls the Colonels’ Greece (- But of course if you ever should have to get off your farm, the next thing’ll be a villa in Malaga, eh. Isn’t that the latest for rich South Africans — ), yes the people are all better off today than they ever were. They have work and they eat. They wear shoes. A uranium deposit on that scale can raise the gross national product to a level where development - viability - becomes a reality, not a dream that depends on ‘justice’, wherever you’re expecting to find that. He pads behind on those bare feet, he’s nothing to say for himself but he’s there. They want shoes for their feet. They’ll have the Germans and French and Italians and South Africans to thank for that, whatever name you use for the place.

The swift flight of single birds laces across vision. They’re building. The urge is on them; they might almost skin blindingly into your face. Those feet are very strong and supple. He’s standing on the blackened stones that he helped carry to line the pit for the spit last year - long skinny toes grapple the stone - as if this provides an elevation for survey. Out of a black sedge or bog that is waterlogged burnt reeds, the new reeds are brilliant silk, sugar-cane green, the colour of the bits of new grass moistened with saliva he shows between his teeth.

— There’s nothing. I always wanted to see what was in the middle of the vlei. —

-Just vlei. — There’s the proof: to someone who was away at school at the time and was never told, it looks as if there never was anything. Come to think of it all the earth is a graveyard, you never know when you’re walking over heads - particularly this continent, cradle of man, prehistoric bones and the bits of shaped stone (sometimes a plough has actually turned one up) that were weapons and utensils. It’s all the same. Their ancestors. No one knows who they were, either. No way of making known: the mouth stopped with mud. Doesn’t exist unless one happens to know - always knows, down here - that it’s there, all right. Already the new growth of reeds must be eight inches high.

— I remember when I was little I used to think if I could get in there I’d build myself a secret hideout on that bit of land. I tried to roll boulders into the river to make stepping-stones, but it’s too deep, they disappeared. -