Nadine Gordimer - Life Times - Stories 1952-2007

He smiled, remembering her. And then he became conscious of a curious old-mannish little face, fixed upon him in a kind of hypnotic dread. There, absolutely stilled with fear beneath his glance, crouched a very big locust. What an amusing face the thing had! A lugubrious long face, that somehow suggested a bald head, and such a glum mouth. It looked like some little person out of a Disney cartoon. It moved slightly, still looking up fearfully at him. Strange body, encased in a sort of old-fashioned creaky armour. He had never realised before what ridiculous-looking insects locusts were! Well, naturally not; they occur to one collectively, as a pest — one doesn’t go around looking at their faces.

The face was certainly curiously human and even expressive, but looking at the body, he decided that the body couldn’t really be called a body at all. With the face, the creature’s kinship with humans ended. The body was flimsy paper stretched over a frame of matchstick, like a small boy’s home-made aeroplane. And those could not be thought of as legs — the great saw-toothed back ones were like the parts of an old crane, and the front ones like — like one of her hairpins, bent in two. At that moment the creature slowly lifted up one of the front legs, and passed it tremblingly over its head, stroking the left antenna down. Just as a man might take out a handkerchief and pass it over his brow.

He began to feel enormously interested in the creature, and leaned over in his chair to see it more closely. It sensed him and beneath its stiff, plated sides, he was surprised to see the pulsations of a heart. How fast it was breathing. . He leaned away a little, to frighten it less.

Watching it carefully, and trying to keep himself effaced from its consciousness by not moving, he became aware of some struggle going on in the thing. It seemed to gather itself together in muscular concentration: this coordinated force then passed along its body in a kind of petering tremor, and ended in a stirring along the upward shaft of the great black legs. But the locust remained where it was. Several times this wave of effort currented through it and was spent, but the next time it ended surprisingly in a few hobbling, uneven steps, undercarriage — aeroplane-like again — trailing along the earth.

Then the creature lay, fallen on its side, antennae turned stretched out towards him. It groped with its hands, feeling for a hold on the soft ground, bending its elbows and straining. With a heave, it righted itself, and as it did so, he saw — leaning forward again — what was the trouble. It was the same trouble. His own trouble. The creature had lost one leg. Only the long upward shaft of its left leg remained, with a neat round aperture where, no doubt, the other half of the leg had been jointed in.

Now as he watched the locust gather itself again and again in that concentration of muscle, spend itself again and again in a message that was so puzzlingly never obeyed, he knew exactly what the creature felt. Of course he knew that feeling! That absolute certainty that the leg was there: one had only to lift it. . The upward shaft of the locust’s leg quivered, lifted; why then couldn’t he walk? He tried again. The message came; it was going, through, the leg was lifting, now it was ready — now!. . The shaft sagged in the air, with nothing, nothing to hold it up.

He laughed and shook his head: he knew . . Good Lord, exactly like — he called out to the house — ‘Come quickly! Come and see! You’ve got another patient!’

‘What?’ she shouted. ‘I’m getting tea.’

‘Come and look!’ he called. ‘Now!’

‘. . What is it?’ she said, approaching the locust distastefully.

‘Your locust!’ he said. She jumped away with a little shriek.

‘Don’t worry — it can’t move. It’s as harmless as I am. You must have knocked its leg off when you hit out at it!’ He was laughing at her.

‘Oh, I didn’t!’ she said reproachfully. She loathed it but she loathed to hurt, even more. ‘I never even touched it! All I hit was air. . I couldn’t possibly have hit it. Not its leg off.’

‘All right then. It’s another locust. But it’s lost its leg, anyway. You should just see it. . It doesn’t know the leg isn’t there. God, I know exactly how that feels. . I’ve been watching it, and honestly, it’s uncanny. I can see it feels just like I do!’

She smiled at him, sideways; she seemed suddenly pleased at something. Then, recalling herself, she came forward, bent double, hands upon her hips.

‘Well, if it can’t move. .’ she said, hanging over it.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ he laughed. ‘Touch it.’

‘Ah, the poor thing,’ she said, catching her breath in compassion. ‘It can’t walk.’

‘Don’t encourage it to self-pity,’ he teased her.

She looked up and laughed. ‘Oh you — ’ she parried, assuming a frown. The locust kept its solemn silly face turned to her. ‘Shame, isn’t he a funny old man,’ she said. ‘But what will happen to him?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, for being in the same boat absolved him from responsibility or pity. ‘Maybe he’ll grow another one. Lizards grow new tails, if they lose them.’

‘Oh, lizards ,’ she said. ‘ — but not these. I’m afraid the cat’ll get him.’

‘Get another little chair made for him and you can wheel him out here with me.’

‘Yes,’ she laughed. ‘Only for him it would have to be a kind of little cart, with wheels.’

‘Or maybe he could be taught to use crutches. I’m sure the farmers would like to know that he was being kept active.’

‘The poor old thing,’ she said, bending over the locust again. And reaching back somewhere into an inquisitive childhood she picked up a thin wand of twig and prodded the locust, very gently. ‘Funny thing is, it’s even the same leg, the left one.’ She looked round at him and smiled.

‘I know,’ he nodded, laughing. ‘The two of us. .’ And then he shook his head and, smiling, said it again: ‘The two of us.’

She was laughing and just then she flicked the twig more sharply than she meant to and at the touch of it there was a sudden flurried papery whirr, and the locust flew away.

She stood there with the stick in her hand, half afraid of it again, and appealed, unnerved as a child, ‘What happened? What happened?’

There was a moment of silence.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said irritably.

They had forgotten that locusts can fly.

They stumbled round the Polyclinic, humpy in the dark with their props and costumes. ‘A drain!’ someone shouted, ‘Look out!’ ‘Drain ahead!’ They were all talking at once.

The others waiting in the car stared out at them; the driver leaned over his window: ‘All right?’

They gesticulated, called out together.

‘ — Can’t hear. Is it OK?’ shouted the driver.

Peering, chins lifted over bundles, they arrived back at the car again. ‘There’s nobody there. It’s all locked up.’

‘Are you sure it was the Polyclinic?’

‘Well, it’s very nice, I must say!’

They stood around the car, laughing in the pleasant little adventure of being lost together.

A thin native who had been watching them suspiciously from the dusty-red wash set afloat upon the night by the one street light, came over and mumbled, ‘I take you. . You want to go inside?’ He looked over his shoulder to the location gates.

‘Get in,’ one young girl nudged the other towards the car. Suddenly they all got in, shut the doors.

‘I take you,’ said the boy again, his hands deep in his pockets.

At that moment a light wavered down the road from the gates, a bicycle swooped swallow-like upon the car, a fat police-boy in uniform shone a torch. ‘You in any trouble there, sir?’ he roared. His knobkerrie swung from his belt.