Nadine Gordimer - The Conservationist

He follows the black edge wherever it is possible to go on foot, along the river, both left and right of the point at which he approached it, coming down through the third pasture. Where black has made a promontory out into unburned veld, at first he skirts it all the way round, almost squeamishly, but later he strikes straight across these patches. His boots turn grey and he does not know whether he imagines a residual heat comes through the soles. A rat with head intact and eyes open is laid out. Not burned; overcome by fumes? Some coot swim clockwork circles on the river. They are black as everything except the glancing river, but alive, like it, where everything is dead. The river is extraordinarily strong, slithering and shining, already it seems to be making the new paths possible for it through the weakened foothold of destroyed reeds; it swells against its surface sheath and it is impossible to look at it in one place: he feels his eyes carried along. And it seems to have become silent; nothing opposes it. He pushes his way about through burned reeds and along fields the whole morning, trudging up to consult with Jacobus and then going off down again. Of course, Jacobus wants to take full credit for fighting the fire off the farm. It’s a long story, like all their stories, and it has to be listened to with one ear. They go together to look at the calf that was thought to be caught by the blaze when it strayed. The man who is feeding the little beast its mash wears a woollen scarf tied round his face the way they do when they have a toothache or headache. — So what did those skelms do to you eh, Solomon? —

Jacobus says — That nice jersey the young baas he give it — you know that one? Very, very nice jersey — they’s take it. Everything. You know that one jersey? —

He does not; he does not know how Terry chooses to dispose of his clothes.

— Trousers, shoes, that one jersey Terry give it — everything. — Jacobus is no beauty and when he makes dramatic emphasis he will draw back his cracked lips and show those filthy old teeth.

— It’s all right again now, hey? —

The scarf is unwound with an obedience that wasn’t called for. It’s a pleasant enough black face, patient, with a half smile. There’s a thick pair of puckered lips sewn together right across the forehead.

— Oh it’ll still fade — get better — it takes time. - He doesn’t know how much will be understood. He rarely has had occasion to talk directly to this one, before; Solomon usually has the talking done for him by Jacobus. But the man suddenly speaks:

— This stays by me up to the day when I’m die. -

The woollen scarf is carefully replaced.

— That jersey was very, very nice. —

Jacobus does not look while the white hand streaked with the soot of burned vegetation extracts the packet of cigarettes.

A moment’s hesitation; four into the palms of Solomon.

— Here. - Two for Jacobus.

Someone neglected a cooking fire or De Beer’s boys decided off their own bat they wanted to burn weeds or force the green through early in a patch of pasture. — Bad luck for us this winter, eh, Jacobus? —

Jacobus is showing with windmill sweeps of the arm, as they walk, how the fire was kept back from the lands. But the truth is it looks as if it reached its own limitation where it wasn’t stopped by the existing firebreaks. The wind changed; something like that. Will the willows ever be the same again? They think if the lands are saved no damage has been done. They don’t understand what the vlei is, the way the vast sponge of earth held in place by the reeds in turn holds the run-off when the rains come, the way the reeds filter, shelter. What about the birds? Weavers? Bishop birds? Snipe? Piebald kingfisher that he sometimes sees? The duck? The guinea fowl nest in the drier sections, as well. There will have been no nests, though, at this time of year. But what else — insects, larvae, the hidden mesh in there of low forms that net life, beginning small as amoeba, as the dying, rotting, beginning again?

Burned off black. Back down there he moves, a lone piece of vermin through that convict’s head of stubble manged with ash. Rags of black hang from the lower stumps of the willows. Perhaps it is not their substance but the remains of the feathery parts of the reeds. Up into some of the older trees fire has thrust a surgeon’s red-gloved hand, cauterizing through a vaginal gap or knot-hole; the raised pattern on the trunks of all of them has been scorched into a velour of fine white ash.

His calves are aching. It’s something to do with the way the circulation is affected: the doctor said smoke less. That’s why he started to smoke cigars in place of cigarettes; except that he now smokes both, instead. But it’s not possible to lie down here, not today, not in all this litter from the fire. No wonder they ache. Distress is a compulsion to examine minutely — this anguished restless necessity, when something can’t be undone, when there’s nothing to be done, to keep going over and over the same ground. He will enter the house today. Somewhere to put his feet up. He comes in as always, like a stranger; the living-room has its unchanging, familiar and impersonal components, as a motel room has when he travels — it does not matter that in this case the signs of a previous tenant, the old magazine, the tot left in the bottle, the remnants of the fruit-bowl, are his own. Even the scent of insecticide disguised as a substitute for fresh air is there. Alina has been spraying against something although he keeps little for moths to feed on but a couple of pairs of boots; there are the few oddments of clothing his son wouldn’t fit into any more if he were to come here now. They could be given away out of compassion as the jersey was. The house is a waste, nobody uses it. Of course the month of the school holidays when he might have been here is nearly over. Soon time for him to be hitching his way home now.

Inspecting the backs of hands as he lies on the sofa he can see the graining of the skin where black was washed in rather than off. Marks of fire: she showed him the clay pots, in her house. She puts out cigarettes by holding the stub down as if keeping the head of a drowning man under water while she talks. — Oh, compassion’s like masturbation. Doesn’t do anyone else any harm, and if it makes you feel better. — Maybe milord Terry’d agree with you, now, he’d find it adolescent to go down to the compound with his old clothes. One could tease him and tell him it was dangerous — for them to have possessions: a poor devil has his head split open for a few rands. You are right, you never know when you are going to do more harm than good, do you? I can bring porcelain from Japan, really beautiful stuff. But that’s what you liked — something spoiled by the fire.

Now there is news to write to South West — the fire. If there happens to be any paper in the house. For the last few minutes he has known that Alina has come in and is on the other side of the inner wall, in the kitchen; he recognizes the slight sounds that follow the pattern of movements she makes in her idea of the preparation of a meal, as one can differentiate between the quiet presence of a cat, slipping into a room along the walls to jump on to a sunny window-sill, and a mouse scuttling and rummaging among food packets or papers. Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone. First the tap is turned on full blast so that it overruns the capacity of the kettle. The kettle touches down on the steel plate of the stove. The sound of the bread tin lid buckling as it is opened. Presently she must come into this room to get at the refrigerator; yes — and she does not knock because somehow the refrigerator makes of the room an extension of the kitchen, in a way. But she places her feet (in blue bootee slippers whose soles show the number 7 as they descend and lift) carefully and does not look at the sofa, as if someone were sleeping there whom attention might waken. — Is there a writing-pad? —