Nadine Gordimer - The Conservationist

— Oh no! How ghastly — She put her palm down a moment on his wrist, just as he was breaking off a piece of the roll on his side-plate.

— Not at all, I’ll be expropriated, sell to the government, make a fortune. And that’ll be the one and only success in my farming operations! — While they laughed, he popped the bit of bread into his mouth, and as he did so, caught on the back of his hand the perfume of the woman beside him. She dutifully divided her attention between the men on her left and right, but when it was his turn she talked in a low voice, with many questioning murmurs, as if words were not always necessary, and a special shy but open gaze in her blue-green eyes. He knew that look; was surprised he had not noticed it before, because it was obvious that it must have been there, for him, on other occasions, come to think of it. We’ve been aware of each other a long time, it said. We’ll soon be old, or dead. But he, who was not accustomed to passing over such opportunities whenever or however they presented themselves, felt nothing of his usual swift reaction to pounce in discreet response. A little later, when her daughter, whom he used to fetch to play with his son a few years ago, and who was now sixteen or seventeen, came to give him the good-night kiss on the cheek that was the relic of childhood politeness, he made a discovery. It was she, among the females present, whom he wanted to meet and undress in a hotel room.

The breeze-block quarters that had been put up on this farm kept the rain out better than the mud-houses the people were used to making for themselves, but they were colder in winter. They had begun to be cold already, as soon as the sun went down; the coughing of the children went on incessantly and ignored inside, while the men squatted or stood with hunched shoulders round the brazier. Jacobus had made his own arrangements: did not live down at the compound at all, actually — he and his wife and youngest child occupied Alina’s room in what was supposed to be the domestic servant’s quarters near the house, while Alina and her man had fixed up the shed as their room — but Jacobus came to the compound often for the company, in the evenings, as well as going back and forth for one reason or another, during the day. He was speaking of a dog, the need of a fierce dog to keep intruders off the farm at night. — Like the India’s dogs at the shop. Something everybody will be afraid of. I’ll keep it chained up all day, then it will get mad at night. That’s the way to have a good dog. —

— Ask him. —

— I told you — many times, I’ve said it to-him. —

— What can you do then. —

— Many times. You know how it is. You say one thing, and they just use it to say another. He looks past my face: how many dogs already on this farm? They are killing everything, the compound dogs. So I tell him it’s not true about the dogs. Then he says, then people must be putting traps for the birds, where have the birds gone? —

— Even the eggs — someone said.

Jacobus made a soft, long ah-sound of exasperation and defeated contest, and the others made similar sounds, a kind of laughter. He clicked his tongue against his palate in a glottal snap-of-the-fingers.

— Even the eggs… —

But Jacobus did not respond and so the laughter died; he could not encourage this talk too much — he was himself half on the side of the authority it mocked, he earned his privileges by that authority and also protected them against its source. He had told the women to warn the children not to collect eggs where they could be seen; he had remarked to him that there were plenty of guinea fowl about if you had to be up at work early enough to see them.

— He won’t bring — (a gesture of the head to indicate the police) — from town? —

Jacobus grinned out of inside knowledge. - He doesn’t like those Dutchmen! —

The man called Witbooi who had come from Rhodesia illegally seventeen years before rocked slightly, reassured, on his haunches. If he had no pass, it was not that he, whose real name was Simon Somazhegwana, had no papers; in the plastic fertilizer bag that held his clothes and possessions there was an old wallet full of paper — expired work permits from areas where he had been endorsed out, pages torn from school exercise books inscribed Bearer, Witbooi, is a good boy … TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN… This is to say that Bearer, native Witbooi … with the barely-literate signatures of white housewives and farmers as reference. He produced them to employer after employer, over the years, preserving them carefully against a day when they would meet the pair of eyes in which surely they would find validity, like that of any other document given out by white people; like that of the bits of paper issued officially at the pass office.

The farm people bought their paraffin, matches, tobacco, soap, tea and sugar from the Indian store at the turn-off of the farm road; the weekly mealie-meal ration was part of their wages, doled out from sacks by Jacobus. The children made expeditions to the store when they had cents from the gate to buy sweets with, or found bottles on which they could claim the deposit. Jacobus, his own master most of the week, used the tractor to drive down when he pleased.

— What’s going on at your place there? -

— Why? Why ‘what is going on’? — Jacobus did not talk to the Indian as he did to a white man, nor as he would to one of his own people.

The Indians behind the counter were three: the old one — the father’s father — the father himself, who had spoken, and a slim young son. The old one had a beard, bluish lips on which two worn brown teeth rested, wore a round white cap, and sat all day on a kitchen chair. The full contours of the middle one’s face shone with stubble and he was always in shirtsleeves; this son (there were several) wore tight bell-bottom pants and jackets with a back vent or lurex thread — sometimes farm workers would touch and marvel, half joking: — Where you buy this? In town? — On Saturdays and Sundays Indians still younger served — schoolboys of the family, who began to help in the shop as soon as they were old enough to distinguish the different denominations of coins.

— You know. You’ve been fighting there. — The challenging, aggressive way of speaking was something that meant nothing to farm people; a convention of the barriers between them and the Indian proprietor; they were used to him.

Jacobus fell in with the rules of the game. — Me! I didn’t do nothing. Me, fight! What for? —

— Come on, man! The police was there on your farm. Someone killed there. —

— The police was here? To you? — Jacobus screwed up one eye, leant forward just a little across the counter.

— They came here, they came here. They talked to my boys — my boys don’t know anything, what do they know about your place. -

The Indians had blacks of their own working for them.

— No, they don’t know our place. That’s right. —

The Indian threw the money into the till expertly, banged it shut with a shrill ring. — You make trouble down there, you bring the police to make trouble for everybody. —

— We don’t make. — Jacobus shook an open hand in the direction of the location. — The people there —

— Trouble for everybody! —

But the old man did not open his half-closed eyes or move his folded hands whose right index finger twitched all the time like a winged insect come to rest, and the young one leant S-shaped against the counter and seemed not to have been listening.

— No, everything it’s all right. That man he was dead, the police come and take it away. Finish. Is not our trouble. - The ‘our’ took in the shopkeeper, his ménage , Jacobus himself, and the farm people.