Nadine Gordimer - The Conservationist

He has escaped his colleague’s funeral by sending, in addition to one of his junior directors to represent him, and a large donation in lieu of wreath to the black charity appointed by the widow, a huge bouquet to convey his sympathy to mother and daughter. They are all such old friends. The only way to get out of it was to be unavailable — most unfortunately out of town on business. Out of the country. A sudden call to Japan. Australia. They won’t know the difference.

He and a few other colleagues may have to set up some kind of fund for the two women if it turns out that there is nothing left But it will take months for that financial tangle to be sorted out.

There is always an autopsy in a case like this, and by the time — as the front page of the newspaper puts it — the verdict of suicide and no foul play suspected is confirmed medically, it is Thursday before the funeral is fixed, and he invariably spends most of the weekend on the farm anyway. Just as well be Melbourne. No one will ever know. She stood silently with her mother and sister in line at customs waiting only to declare the plant tied up in newspaper and plastic.

A narrow escape.

Probably they will still go to Plettenberg Bay, after all they have that nice house there, and friends will rally round and persuade them to get away; for the girl’s sake, if nothing else, the women friends will urge: she’s so young, life must go on. (And the widow herself not old; soon they will be looking for a suitable partner for her at dinners.) You could at least write the girl a line from your beloved mother’s apartment in New York — after all, you grew up together. But there’s no contact; the only person who ever mentions your name is the native on the farm. Every time I go there since the schools closed for the Christmas holidays: Terry he’s not coming to help us? Terry he’s not in Jo’burg? Why Terry he isn’t here? —

Let the telephone recording device answer when the telephone rings in the flat. We phoned repeatedly over the holidays but you were just never home. We’d like to have seen something of you — Flung down hidden in the grasses, no one would know there is anyone lying there. Walls of soft silvery-beige lean over him. The grasses are just breaking into their kind of fruition. They are tipped with water-colour brushes, feathers, and beaded with fine-whiskered seeds. He is open only to the sky and that huge jet mouthing its roar high up in space couldn’t pick him out any more than a grain of sand can be singled out while flying over the deserts. The reeds have pennants of bladed leaf. They seethe softly. On their thin masts that would bend under the weight of a moth, plush red Bishop birds cling, dandled and danced. He is alone down at the third pasture, so sure to be undisturbed. Alone and not alone. In the heat of the day flies and midges fly into the eyes and nose as if one were a corpse.

Without the services of the Girl Friday (his office is watched over by her in his absences abroad as a kind of disused parlour, the rolled financial journals put aside on his desk, the air-conditioner kept going and the ashtrays kept empty) bonsellas for the boys are not bought, ready for him, this Christmas. He has remembered just in time, and there is the Indians’ — he can stop a minute and find something that will do. Months have gone by, they must have found some solution to their troubles long ago — anyway it’s just too bad, he has no intention of driving back to town to shop.

A figure of purpose enters past rusty wire stands of wilted vegetables and blackening bananas and among the blacks who block the doorway drinking cans of sweet drinks or waiting dreamily to buy. The middle-aged Indian and his son have noticed at once, he produces a kind of alert; but perhaps that is only because he is such a large man, white, a head above every head; a sticky piccanin is staring in fascination at the level of his knee. They are affable as only shop-keeping Jews and Indians are. It’s as if they expected him. They’ve forgiven him; he made some social blunder that nobody’s going to mention. They knew he would come back some time; they can’t be dispensed with.

— I got something very nice. This is what all the boys buy. They like. You’ll see. -

The denim trousers are so stiff the garments could stand alone. They have ‘Lone Ranger’ or ‘Deputy Sheriff’, a choice of legend, embroidered between two star-shaped studs on a back pocket. But he can’t see Jacobus as a movie hero. — Now something for the older boys. —

— This’s the right thing. First quality polyester, no-iron. Nice colours, very nice colours. That’s what they like. Let me tell you. —

— How much? —

— Oh it’s cheap. It’s not expensive. -

— How much? And the pants? —

— Don’t worry, we give you a good price, you know that —

The purchase is a large one, and the plump son with the liquid eyes heavy with good-nature or laughter or last night’s sex has dropped what he was doing and father and son are energetically folding and stacking garments to make a neat parcel. The father hustles spectacularly — No, no man, that’s no good, get one of the big sheets from inside there — no, put that shirt here, look what you do to the collar! — There you are. Try that, sir. Is that okay? You sure? Just don’t carry on the string, eh, I don’t want the paper to tear and everything falls — wait — Dawood! What about one of those shirt boxes, man- No, that’ll do fine. —

— He’ll take it to the car for you. Dawood —

— Give here, it’s perfect. —

They are beaming at him. Except the old man who sits as always, not dead yet, and looks through him and the blacks as if all are the same to him, or are not there at all. His gaze meets the old man’s and nobody sees; a chink in the eye of a blind man.

— Compliments of the season to you. If you need anything, we open right through to seven tonight. I suppose we be greeting the young gentleman over the holidays. Oh that’s a nice boy. And he like the Indian foods, you know! Tell him he must come —

Yes, yes, he’ll tell him, thank you, thank you.

They beat a dog at the compound on Christmas Day. He lies down there and hears it. He’s given them their pair of trousers or shirt each (ten per cent discount from the Indians’) and the beer and hunk of meat Jacobus was deputed to buy; probably that’s what the dog’s got at: the meat. The bellowing howls die to squeals and whimpers and then it’s started again. He cannot not hear it. They’ve got no bloody feeling for animals. Well, if the cur had had any sense; they’d murder for meat. There is no such thing as a continuous cry of pain, eh; interesting. Man or beast, there has to be a stop for breath although the pain doesn’t cease. Unless it is that pain is transmitted in waves or pulsations or whatever you call it — back to the brain from the spot where it’s being inflicted, back from the brain to the place where the sjambok’s cut or the boot’s landing. They should be stopped. They shouldn’t keep those dogs. But you can’t get through over things like that. — What dogs? Is only one small dogs, he doesn’t know to chase the birds — grinning on brown-necked teeth. You can’t get through. You are right, reading the cards on the table; charity’s a waste of time, towards man or beast, it only patches up a little bit of pain here and there. If it were as easy as that! If I stop them hitting it now that won’t stop them doing it again when I’m not here. Everything needs changing. Don’t you realize, if you were here these days they wouldn’t want to have you on their side, they’d want you to be a white bitch. It makes things clearer all round. If you had any sense in that intelligent head of yours, you’d know that’s how you had to end up. There isn’t anything else they need from you.