Nadine Gordimer - The Conservationist

— I don’t know. What brother? Has he got a brother here? —

A snort and a smile. — That’s his brother, at Theronshoop. -

They know everything about us. He wonders whether he should say something about the tractor. Oh what the hell, if it gives the old devil a thrill; so long as it doesn’t harm the tractor. There will be another time, sometime, when he feels more like delivering himself of a reproach. — Well, what’s your trouble, Jacobus? — Like a dog, the man scents he’s in the mood to hand out something. To get at the cigarettes in his trouser-pocket, he has to lift his body by expanding his chest, he takes three from the pack and the cupped hands are immediately there to receive them. With two fingers Jacobus puts them into the breast pocket of his overalls.

All serious discussions of farm business are held here in the kitchen, standing up. — Master, we must have another boy for the cows. -

— For the cows! But what’s wrong with Solomon and Phineas and Witbooi? —

— Witbooi he’s… master, he’s getting little bit old. - But it sounds as though the notion has just presented itself to be seized upon as a reason.

— Have you been quarrelling, you boys? What’s Witbooi done? —

— No, no, Witbooi he’s all right. We are nice together. You know that long time. Another boy. He can help Witbooi. —

— No more boys! The winter’s coming. Hey, Jacobus? What d’we want more boys for, there’s nothing much growing! No, no, you tell Witbooi to carry on. —

He is smiling, laughing almost, chivvying. The black man is slowly pushed into smiles, too, first nodding his head, then shaking it, slowly, but still smiling, distressed, half laughing.

— All right, Jacobus. —

He locks the door of the sideboard where the liquor is kept; stands looking round a moment in this room that so seldom holds people: they have left their dents in the chair cushions. The well-regulated demands and responses between the Boers and himself, the usual sort of exchange between his black man and himself have re-engraved the fine criss-cross of grooves on which his mind habitually runs. The empty space that was clear in him this afternoon is footprinted over, it exists no more than does a city pavement under the comings and goings of passing bodies that make it what it is. He recognizes with something like pleasure the onset of the usual feeling he has on Sunday night — a slight anticipatory impatience to set off for the city. Just as on Sunday morning he is ready to get out of it. The rhythm of these alternating feelings is simple and dependable as the daily cognisance of peristaltic activity that presages his bowel movement, along with the after-breakfast cigarette. As he’s about to leave the house, he thinks of that kitten. Down on his knees, face tightened and reddened by the bending, he peers under the sideboard. Dust there, the tidemark where the wax polish, describing the arc of the polishing cloth, ends. Well, he’s got something better to do… He’ll tell Jacobus to tell Alina, on the way out. There was a marble in the dust against the wainscot. He has picked it up for his son; finds it in his hand. He is negotiating the dip where the road turns out of the farm entrance, past the post where a mealiecob and a white rag flag are still stuck up to indicate the mealies that were for sale six weeks ago, and the marble presses like a cyst between his right palm and the steering wheel. His son is sixteen now. He tries awkwardly to wind down the window on that side, still holding the marble. When the window is open the hand hesitates. He has tossed the marble not out of the window, but into the open shelf under the dashboard.

… I ask also for children, that this village may have a large population, and that your name may never come to an end.

Jacobus had six pieces of brown paper torn from a sugar bag from the Indian shop, spread on the ground before his haunches. He took three cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his overalls. His hands were slender and long-boned but the fingertips were calloused and they seemed to juggle the white tubes like the sensitive but hard points of a crab’s claws; there was only one nail, the thumbnail, long enough to slit the cigarettes open, and it was too thick to do so without spilling the contents. Dismissing his own laziness at trying to do things the amateurish way, he took out of the trouser section of the overalls, that were very large and folded over on themselves under a belt, so that the fly ran diagonally from where the division between his legs must be to where his left hip must be, a lozenge tin containing the proper equipment. In it was a broken razor blade; he slit the three cigarettes neatly and divided their tobacco onto the six bits of brown paper.

— What about the Dutchman at the other farm? The brother of the one who came yesterday. He can try there. —

They were resting; they had been feeding the dry and stripped mealie plants into a machine that chopped up the stuff for cattle fodder; tissue-thin fragments of leaf, millimetre strips of bamboo-smooth stalk, flecks of pith like spit, clung lightly to them in a dust complex as snow-flakes. Their old hats protected the heads of three, but the bare wool of the fourth, whose possibilities of finding a job were in question, was linted with it.

— That’s no good. -

— He went there. —

The first bit of brown paper with its pile of tobacco was rolled, licked, handed out. — He’d better try town. —

It was not necessary to remind Jacobus that a farm labourer has no papers for town. He must have something in mind.

— They’re short at the abattoir. —

— Who told you that? —

— Alina’s daughter’s husband said. —

The man was given a smoke, too. He had not worked with them the whole morning but had come to look for them, down from the compound, falling into the rhythm of their work, an hour or two ago.

Someone made a loud tongue-click, followed by a sharp, grunted squeak of scepticism, and another click.

— That’s the municipality, isn’t it? They’re going to take someone without a town pass? I’ve never heard of it. The municipality? —

— We can all go to earn money in town then! —

— Yes — Jacobus offers for what it’s worth, his voice rising slightly — You can ask the daughter’s husband, he’ll tell you. They are short. They’ll take you on. That’s what he said once. —

A figure went by on a bicycle, pumping regularly from left leg to right, singing without words as a man does when the wind of his own passage, in his ears, makes him confident that because he can scarcely hear himself, no one else can, either. One of them called teasingly after him; he had not noticed them under the open shelter of the barn.

— I can go and ask on the telephone. — For Jacobus, if not for them, it was simple as that.

— Who will you ask on the telephone? —

The young man had propped his bicycle near by, and joined them, without interruption, respectful of a conversation he could not at once expect to follow. He was wearing his black and white checked cap, green bell-bottoms, shoes and socks, yellow orlon-knit shirt; the day-off clothes set him apart like a bridegroom among his familiars.

— Come on. I can go up to the house now and phone William at the India’s. William can come to the phone. They’ll call him. He can ask Alina’s daughter. — Jacobus reeled off answers to all their doubts and objections before they could formulate them.

Still they hesitated. He laughed. They knew that he had the keys of the house, that he could go in and out when he liked. Perhaps it was true that he could even phone the Indian shop and ask to speak to one of the men who worked there. Perhaps the Indian would agree to let him come to the phone.