Nadine Gordimer - The Conservationist

With the glass resting capped over the water bottle in one hand, and the whisky swinging from the other he makes his track across a great field of lucerne. Behind him the moonlit pile is now cleaved diagonally by a narrow darkness where the pressure of his feet and the volume of his two legs at calf-height have furrowed through the tender plants. The sheet lightning dances and softly capers before him; it seems to touch about his body, to run over him. He does not know where he is making for but he too, on a night like this, will know exactly, when he reaches it — where all the qualities of such a night may be present to him in perfection. He has taken lately to sitting in the evenings on the roofless stoep of a stone outhouse where bags of fertilizer are conveniently stored, since it is in the middle of the lands. No one has ever lived there — who can say, people will squat anywhere — no one has used it to live in since he brought the place and he has not yet decided what use might be made of it. With a new roof, it would be a better house than any of them has at the compound, but that’s out of the question because he has discovered, coming there in the evenings, it has the best view of any spot on the whole farm. A guest cottage? — if one wanted such a thing.

There’s a metal folding chair whose plastic thongs are not all broken. That’s how he came to sit down here, the first time, in the first place. He has no idea how it got there; a ring never turns up again, but something no one remembers they’ve left will never be claimed: many months ago some guest afraid he might be expected to sit on the grass must have brought his own comfort along to one of the picnics down at the river. And he himself must have forgotten to fold the chair and throw it behind the fertilizer bags the last time he used it; it is placed at an angle just to the left of a stunted and much-hacked mulberry tree that has survived (somebody must have lived here at one time). It is strange to see a chair there as if it had been appointed. It is rather like being disembodied and seeing himself sitting there.

He inhabits — by filling — the place prepared for him. The whisky and water is delicious. Although one may eat like a pig when alone, drinking becomes a more careful and conscious pleasure when it’s not fuel for social intercourse. Every few seconds the whole night undulates with sheet lightning and now and then the pitchy sky on the left. cracks like a teacup from top to bottom in a blinding scribble whose running instant (complex as a capillary vein or the topography of a river) is branded upon the dark of eyelids blinked in reaction. But there’s no thunder. The fading call of his guinea fowl in the mealies comes quite clearly and all around — or the firing seems so, because the hills on the horizon throw a retort swiftly from one to another — De Beer and his kind are amusing their kids by letting off fireworks. All occasions are family ones for them. No thunder: that tremendous storm is miles away and it’s possible, just once, on a night like this, to sit at the point where its element ends and the absolutely calm, full-moon-lit element begins. It is really two nights at once; just as midnight will bisect two years.

He is fully aware that he’s feeling what he’s drinking but it certainly isn’t enough to do more than heighten a little his perception of this miraculous night. At any of their parties he would have drunk much more by now, as much as they will be drinking, until they all sway together, clutch each other’s hands and hold on, as if they could help each other, as if some rug is about to be pulled from under their feet.

He feels what can only be a sense of superiority. Not because he is not among them any more, not this year — Someone of your (basic) intelligence, Mehring, even you had to get shot of that lot eventually- No, not because of what they may or may not be, drinking Veuve Cliquot while the coloured band plays, watching that little green rocket ejaculate weakly over the vlei while the children cling to their mother’s pink close-together thighs, for taking over anyone’s festival, any excuse to begin beer-drinking before the weekend — but because no one is watching this night the way he is. No one is seeing it but him. That’s the feeling. You produced tears when you left the country but do you know about this?

And you don’t know that he and I sat together, just the two of us, out here in front of a house that isn’t a house and a tree that at this moment doesn’t seem to be a tree but a paper shuffle in the sudden breeze, a blot shifting dark against the light. We two men sit here where you can keep the whole stretch of reeds and river before you, not so much as a bat can move down there without making a shadow in the moonlight, and we kill the rest of the bottle. From what direction he comes won’t be sure, not more than a shadow among shadows, a rustle in the night-secret movement of harmless creatures in the grass — but he said he would come: loping up, with a hop onto the old roofless stoep, where he squats comfortably enough. He must be grinning on those filthy teeth, if the moonlight behind him didn’t make the face a dark blank. — Good, Jacobus! Now we have our drink, eh? Come! — There’s no second chair, so any awkwardness about taking it wouldn’t arise. Rather the way it used to be in the old days in the desert, when the Damara boys would squat with us round the fire and tell us tall stories about their hunting.

— You like it? Very good stuff. Very good. It’s nice, eh? Warm inside the stomach? —

He has perhaps never tasted it before. But of course he has, like the boere musiek, they develop a taste for everything, they want to wear shoes all right, just give them a chance.

— Here. — (And at once he’s holding out his glass as if he did so every day.) — I’ll give you some more. You’re happy tonight, eh? Everyone’s happy tonight. Music, drinking, pretty fireworks in the sky… you too, eh? How long you been here? —

No, not how long he’s worked for me; how many years on this place is what I mean. Jacobus was in residence when I bought; he had worked for the previous owner, or perhaps it was only on some neighbouring farm: boundaries mean little to them, when they say ‘here’. - How old are you? —

He laughs, of course. — Not old — he always says — not yet old. —

Probably doesn’t know. — Happy-happy. Tomorrow another New Year, eh, Jacobus. Long time, long time now. — Yes, it doesn’t stand still for any of us; his children (which are his children?) must be growing up. He has daughters I know — sons? — I ought to know. Which of them is his? They have probably gone away. He’ll never leave this place. Where would he go? — We’re going to finish the bottle, Jacobus, you and I, just this once. You think we’re strong enough to finish the bottle? —

And of course he laughs. Everyone knows how much of their own brew they can put away. It’s a feast or a famine with them; they gorge themselves when they can and starve when they have to, that’s their strength. — Everyone’s happy. It’s a good farm, a good place to work, mmh? And the cattle are looking fine, this summer. We’re building up a nice little herd. Except for that young bull — I’m not so sure I made the right buy, with that one. I was taken for a ride. Wha’d’you think? You must know as much as the next man about cattle stock by now, you and Phineas and Solomon, you mayn’t know the jargon, but you know the feel of a chunk of good beef-flesh under your hand, I’ll bet —

Just this once.

They can talk together about cattle, there’s that much in common. The old devil’s no fool when he doesn’t want to be and it doesn’t suit him to be. He was quite sharp about the bull the other day; one would almost say needling, pretending innocence.