Doris Lessing - The Grass is Singing

As time passed, the heat became an obsession. She could not bear the sapping, undermining waves that beat down from the iron roof. Even the usually active dogs used to lie all day on the verandah, moving from place to place as the bricks grew warm under them, their tongues lolling wetly, so that the floor was covered by small pools. Mary could hear them panting softly, or whining with exasperation because of the flies. And when they came to put their heads on her knee, pleading for sympathy because of the heat, she would shoo them off crossly: the enormous, rank smelling animals were an irritation to her, getting under her feet as she moved about the little house, leaving hairs on the cushions, snuffling noisily for fleas when she was trying to rest. She would lock them out of the house, and in the middle of the morning she would tell the boy to carry a petrol tin full of lukewarm water into the bedroom, and, having made sure he was out of the house, she stripped herself and stood in a basin on the brick floor, pouring it over her. The scattering drops fell on the porous brick, which hissed with dryness.

'When is it going to rain?' she asked Dick.

'Oh, not for another month yet,' he answered easily, but,looking surprised at her question. Surely she knew when the rains were likely to fall? She had been in the country longer than he had. But it seemed to her that in the town there had been no seasons, really, not as there were here. She had been out of the rhythm of cold and heat and rain. It had been hot it had rained, the cold weather had come – yes, certainly; but it was something extraneous to her, something happening independent of her. Here body and mind were subservient to the slow movement of the seasons; she had never in her life watched an implacable sky for signs of rain, as she did now, standing on the verandah, and screwing up her eyes at the great massed white clouds, like blocks of glittering crystal quartz sailing through the blue.

'The water is going very quickly,' said Dick, one day, frowning.

It was fetched twice a week from the bottom of the hill where do well was. Mary would hear shouting and yelling, as if someone were in agonized pain, and going out to the front of the house, she watched the water-cart come through the trees, drawn by two slow-moving beautiful oxen, straining with their hindquarters up the slope. The cart was two petrol drums lashed to a frame, and in front, the disselboom noted on yokes on the necks of the big powerful beasts. She watched the thick muscles surging under the hide, and saw how branches of trees had been laid over the drums to -keep the water cool. Sometimes it splashed up and made a fine sparkling spray falling through the sunshine, and the oxen tossed their heads and blew out their nostrils, smelting the water. And all the time the native driver yelled and howled, dancing beside his beasts and lashing with his long whip that coiled and hissed in the air, but never touched them.

`What are you using it for?' asked Dick. She told him. His face darkened, and he looked at her in incredulous horror, as if she had committed a crime.

`What, wasting it like that?'

`I am not wasting it,' she said coldly. `I am so hot I can't stand it. I want to cool myself.'

Dick swallowed, trying to keep calm. `Listen to me,' he said angrily, in a voice he had never before used to her. `Listen to me! Every time I order the water cart to fetch water for the house, it means a driver, and two wagon boys, and two oxen off other work for a whole morning. It costs money to fetch water. And then you go and throw it away! Why don't you fill the bath with water and get into it, instead of wasting it and throwing it away each time?'

She was furious. This seemed the last straw. Here was she, living here uncomplainingly, suffering these hardships; and then she could not use a couple of gallons of water! She opened her mouth to shout at him, but before she could, he had become suddenly contrite because of the way he had spoken to her; and there was another of those little scenes which comforted and soothed her: he apologizing, abasing himself, and she forgiving him.

But when he had gone, she went into the bathroom, and stared down at the bath, still hating him for what he had said. The bathroom had been built on after the house was finished. It was a lean-to with mud walls (mud plastered over bush poles) and a tin roof. Where the rain had run through the joins in the roof, the whitewash was discoloured and the mud cracked. The bath itself was of zinc, a shallow zinc shape set into a dried mud base. The metal had been dazzling once; she could see how it had been because the scratches on the dull surface glittered brightly. Over many years a patina of grease and dirt had formed, and now,

when it was scrubbed, it wore thin in patches only. It was filthy, filthy! Mary stared down at it, stiff with distaste. When she bathed, which was only twice a week because of the trouble and cost of fetching water, she sat gingerly at the extreme end of the bath, trying to touch it as little as possible, and getting out as soon as she could. Here a bath was like medicine, which had to be taken, not a luxury to be enjoyed.

The arrangements for the bath were unbelievable, she cried, tearing herself to pieces with her own anger. On bath nights two petrol tins of water were heated on the stove, and carried into the bathroom and set down on the floor. They were covered over with thick farm sacks to keep the water hot, and the sacks were hot and steamy and sent up a musty smell. Across the tops of the tins pieces of brushwood had been wedged, to carry them by, and the wood was greasy with much handling. She just would not put up with it, she said at last, turning to leave the bathroom in angry distaste. She called the boy and told him to scrub the bath, to scrub it until it was clean. He thought she meant the usual scrubbing, and in five minutes had finished. She went to examine it: it was just the same. Stroking her fingers over the zinc, she could feel the crust of dirt. She called him back and told him to clean, to clean it properly, to go on scrubbing till it shone, every inch of it.

That was about eleven in the morning.

It was an unfortunate day for Mary. It was on that day that she made her first contact with `the district', in the shape of Charlie Slatter and his wife. It is worth while explaining in detail what happened that day, because so many things can be understood by it: she went from mistake to mistake, with her head held high and her mouth set tight, rigid with pride and the determination not to show weakness. When hick returned to lunch, he found her cooking in the kitchen, looking positively ugly with anger, her face flushed and her hair untidy.

`Where is the boy?' he asked, surprised to find her doing his work.

'Cleaning the bath,' she said shortly, snapping out the words angrily.

'Why now?’

'It's dirty,' she said.

Dick went into the bathroom, from where he could hear the sluish, sluish of a scrubbing brush, and found the native bent over the bath, rubbing away, but making little impression. He returned to the kitchen.

'Why start him on it now?' he asked. 'It's been like that for years. A zinc bath goes like that. It's not dirt, Mary, not really. It changes colour.'

Without looking at him she piled a tray with food and marched into the front room. 'It's dirt,' she said. 'I will never get into that bath again until it is really clean. How you can allow your things to be so filthy I cannot understand.'

'You have used it yourself for some weeks without complaining,' he said dryly, automatically reaching for a cigarette and sticking it between his lips. But she did not reply.

He shook his head when she said the food was ready and went off to the fields again, calling for the dogs. When she was in this mood, he could not bear to be near her. Mary cleared the table, without eating herself, and sat down to listen to the sound of the scrubbing brush. She remained there for two hours, her head aching, listening with every muscle of her tensed body. She was determined he should not scamp his work. At half-past three there was sudden silence, and she sat up, alertly ready to go to the bathroom and make him begin again. But the door opened and he entered. Without looking at her, addressing her invisible double that stood to one side of her, he said that he was going to his hut for some food, and would go on with the bath when he came back. She had forgotten about his food. She never thought of natives as people who had to eat or sleep: they were either there, or they were not, and what their lives were when they were out of her sight she had never paused to think. She nodded, feeling guilty. Then she smothered her guilt, thinking, 'It's his fault for not keeping it properly clean in the first place.'