on his way home to his two giggling younger wives and the ugly sour-faced old woman, the mother of his elder children, the drudge of his household and the scourge of his life.
It was some weeks later that my father asked casually one day: ‘And by the way, Long One, how are things with you? All right again?’
And the Long One answered simply: ‘Yes, baas. She’s gone away.’
‘What do you mean, gone away?’
The Long One shrugged. She had just gone. She had left suddenly, without saying anything to anyone.
Now, the woman came from Nyasaland, which was days and days of weary walking away. Surely she hadn’t gone by herself? Had a brother or an uncle come to fetch her? Had she gone with a band of passing Africans on their way home?
My father wondered a little, and then forgot about it. It wasn’t his affair. He was pleased to have his most useful native back at work with an unharassed mind. And he was particularly pleased that the whole business was ended before the annual trouble over the water-carrying.
For there were two wells. The new one, used by ourselves, had fresh sparkling water that was sweet in the mouth; but in July of each year it ran dry. The water of the old well had a faintly unpleasant taste and was pale brown, but there was always plenty of it. For three or four months of the year, depending on the rains, we shared that well with the compound.
Now, the Long One hated fetching water three miles, four times a week, in the water-cart. The women of the compound disliked having to arrange their visits to the well so as not to get in the way of the water-carriers. There was always grumbling.
This year we had not even begun to use the old well when complaints started that the water tasted bad. The big baas must get the well cleaned.
My father said vaguely that he would clean the well when he had time.
Next day there came a deputation from the women of the compound. Half a dozen of them stood at the back door, arguing that if the well wasn’t cleaned soon, all their children would be sick.
‘I’ll do it next week,’ he promised, with bad grace.
The following morning the Long One brought our first load of the season from the old well; and as we turned the taps on the barrels a foetid smell began to pervade the house. As for drinking it, that was out of the question.
‘Why don’t you keep the cover on the well?’ my father said to the women, who were still loitering resentfully at the back door. He was really angry. ‘Last time the well was cleaned there were fourteen dead rats and a dead snake. We never get things in our well because we remember to keep the lid on.’
But the women appeared to consider the lid being on, or off, was an act of God, and nothing to do with them.
We always went down to watch the well-emptying, which had the fascination of a ritual. Like the mealie-shelling, or the first rains, it marked a turning point in the year. It seemed as if a besieged city were laying plans for the conservation of supplies. The sap was falling in tree and grass-root; the sun was withdrawing high, high, behind a veil of smoke and dust; the fierce dryness of the air was a new element, parching foliage as the heat cauterized it. The well-emptying was an act of faith, and of defiance. For a whole afternoon there would be no water on the farm at all. One well was completely dry. And this one would be drained, dependent on the mysterious ebbing and flowing of underground rivers. What if they should fail us? There was an anxious evening, every year; and in the morning, when the Long One stood at the back door and said, beaming, that the bucket was bringing up fine new water, it was like a festival.
But this afternoon we could not stick it out. The smell was intolerable. We saw the usual complement of bloated rats, laid out on the stones around the well, and there was even the skeleton of a small buck that must have fallen in in the dark. Then we left, along the road that was temporarily a river whose source was that apparently endless succession of buckets, filled by greyish evil water.
It was the Long One himself that came to tell us the news. Afterwards we tried to remember what look that always expressive face wore as he told it.
It seemed that in the last bucket but one had floated a human arm, or rather the fragments of one. Piece by piece they had fetched her up, the Cross-eyed Woman, his own first wife. They recognized her by her bangles. Last of all, the Long One went down to fetch up her head, which was missing.
‘I thought you said your wife had gone home?’ said my father.
‘I thought she had. Where else could she have gone?’
‘Well,’ said my father at last, disgusted by the whole thing, ‘if she had to kill herself, why couldn’t she hang herself on a tree, instead of spoiling the well?’
‘She might have slipped and fallen,’ said the Long One.
My father looked up at him suddenly. He stared for a few moments. Then: ‘Ye-yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose she might.’
Later, we talked about the thing, saying how odd it was that natives should commit suicide; it seemed almost like an impertinence, as if they were claiming to have the same delicate feelings as ours.
But later still, apropos of nothing in particular, my father was heard to remark: ‘Well, I don’t know, I’m damned if I know, but in any case he’s a damned good driver.’
The De Wets Come to Kloof Grange
The verandah, which was lifted on stone pillars, jutted forward over the garden like a box in the theatre. Below were luxuriant masses of flowering shrubs, and creepers whose shiny leaves, like sequins, reflected light from a sky stained scarlet and purple and apple-green. This splendiferous sunset filled one half of the sky, fading gently through shades of mauve to a calm expanse of ruffling grey, blown over by tinted cloudlets; and in this still evening sky, just above a clump of darkening conifers, hung a small crystal moon.
There sat Major Gale and his wife, as they did every evening at this hour, side by side trimly in deck chairs, their sundowners on small tables at their elbows, critically watching, like connoisseurs, the pageant presented for them.
Major Gale said, with satisfaction: ‘Good sunset tonight,’ and they both turned their eyes to the vanquishing moon. The dusk drew veils across sky and garden; and punctually, as she did every day, Mrs Gale shook off nostalgia like a terrier shaking off water and rose, saying: ‘Mosquitoes!’ She drew her deck chair to the wall, where she neatly folded and stacked it.
‘Here is the post,’ she said, her voice quickening; and Major Gale went to the steps, waiting for the native who was hastening towards them through the tall shadowing bushes. He swung a sack from his back and handed it to Major Gale. A sour smell of raw meat rose from the sack. Major Gale said with the kindly contempt he used for his native servants: ‘Did the spooks get you?’ and laughed. The native, who had panted the last mile of his ten-mile journey through a bush filled with unnameable phantoms, ghosts of ancestors, wraiths of tree and beast, put on a pantomime of fear and chattered and shivered for a moment like an ape, to amuse his master. Major Gale dismissed the boy. He ducked thankfully around the corner of the house to the back, where there were lights and companionship.
Mrs Gale lifted the sack and went into the front room. There she lit the oil lamp and called for the houseboy, to whom she handed the groceries
