Doris Lessing - The Grass is Singing

But on that last day something happened that she had not foreseen.

Down in the vlei, near the cowsheds, was where Dick stacked his mealiecobs each year. First sheets of tin were laid down, to protect them from white ants; then the sacks of cobs were emptied on to it, and there slowly formed a low pile of white, slippery-sheathed mealies. This was where she remained these days, to supervise the proper emptying of the sacks. The natives unloaded the dusty sacks from the wagon, holding them by the corners on their shoulders, bent double under the weight. They were like a human conveyor-belt. Two natives standing on the wagon swung the heavy sack on to the waiting bent back. The men moved steadily forward in a file, from the wagon’s side to the mealie-dump, staggering up its side on the staircase of wedged full sacks, to empty the cobs in white flying shower down the stack. The air was gritty and prickly with the tiny fragments of husk. When Mary passed her hand over her face, she could feel it rough, like fine sacking.

She stood at the foot of the heap, which rose before her in a great shining white mountain against the vivid sky, her back to the patient oxen which were standing motionless with their heads lowered, waiting till the wagon should be emptied and they free to move off on another trip. She watched the natives, thinking about the farm, and swinging the sjambok from her wrist so that it made snaky patterns in the red dust. Suddenly she noticed that one of the boys was not working. He had fallen out of line, and was standing by, breathing heavily, his face shining with sweat. She glanced down at her watch. One minute passed, then two. But still he stood, his arms folded, motionless. She waited till the hand of the watch had passed the third minute, in growing indignation that he should have the temerity to remain idle when he should know by now her rule that no one should exceed the allowed one-minute pause. Then she said, 'Get back to work.' He looked at her with the expression common to African labourers: a blank look, as if he hardly saw her, as if there was an obsequious surface with which he faced her and her kind, covering an invulnerable and secret hinterland. In a leisurely way he unfolded his arms and turned away. He was going to fetch himself some water from the petrol tin that stood under a bush for coolness, nearby. She said again, sharply, her voice rising: 'I said, get back to work.'

At this he stopped still, looked at her squarely and said in his own dialect which she did not understand, J want to drink.'

'Don't talk that gibberish to me,' she snapped. She looked around for the boss-boy who was not in sight…

The man said, in a halting ludicrous manner, 'I… want… water.' He spoke in English, and suddenly smiled and opened his mouth and pointed his finger down his throat. She could hear the other natives laughing a little from where they stood on the mealie-dump. Their laughter, which was good-humoured, drove her suddenly mad with anger: she thought it was aimed at her, whereas these men were only taking the opportunity to laugh at something, anything at all, in the middle of their work; one of themselves speaking bad English and sticking his finger down his throat was as good a thing to laugh at as any other.

But most white people think it is `cheek' if a native speaks English. She said, breathless with anger, 'Don't speak English to me,' and then stopped. This man was shrugging and smiling and turning his eyes up to heaven as if protesting that she had forbidden him to speak his own language, and then hers – so what was he to speak? That lazy insolence stung her into an inarticulate rage. She opened her mouth to storm at him, but remained speechless. And she saw in his eyes that sullen resentment, and – what put the finishing touch to it – amused contempt. Involuntarily she lifted her whip and brought it down across his face in a vicious swinging blow. She did not know what she was doing. She stood quite still, trembling; and when she saw him put his hand, dazedly to his face, she looked down at the whip she held in stupefaction, as if the whip had swung out of its own accord, without her willing it. A thick weal pushed up along the dark skin of the cheek as she looked, and from it a drop of bright blood gathered and trickled down and off his chin, and splashed to his chest. He was a great hulk of a man, taller than any of the others, magnificently built, with nothing on but an old sack tied round his waist. As she stood there, frightened, he seemed to tower over her. On his big chest another red drop fell and trickled down to his waist. Then she saw him make a sudden movement, and recoiled, terrified; she thought he was going to attack her. But he only wiped the blood off his face with a big hand that shook a little.

She knew that all the natives

were standing behind her stock-still, watching the scene. In a voice that sounded harsh from breathlessness, she said, 'Now get back to work.' For a moment the man looked at her with an expression that turned her stomach liquid with fear. Then, slowly, he turned away, picked up a sack and rejoined the conveyor-belt of natives. They all began work again quite silently. She was trembling with fright, at her own action, and because of the look she had seen in the man's eyes.

She thought: he will complain to the police that I struck him? This did not frighten her, it made her angry.

The biggest grievance of the white farmer is that he is not allowed to strike his natives, and that if he does, they may – but seldom do – complain to the police. It made her furious to think that this black animal had the right to complain against her, against the behaviour of a white woman. But it is significant that she was not afraid for herself. If this native had gone to the police station, she might have been cautioned, since it was her first offence, by a policeman who was a European, and who came on frequent tours of the district, when he made friends with the farmers, eating with them, staying the might with them, joining their social life. But he, being a contracted native, would have been sent back to this farm; and Dick was hardly likely to make life easy for a native who had complained of his wife. She had behind her the police, the courts, the jails; he, nothing but patience. Yet she-was maddened by the thought he bad even the right to appeal; her greatest anger was directed against the sentimentalists and theoreticians, whom she thought of as 'They' – the law-makers and the Civil Service – who interfered with the natural right of a white farmer to treat his labour as he pleased.

But mingled with her anger was that sensation of victory, a satisfaction that she had won in this battle of wills. She watched him stagger up the sacks, his great shoulders bowed under his load, taking a bitter pleasure in seeing him subdued thus. And nevertheless her knees were still weak: she could have sworn that he nearly attacked her in that awful moment after she struck him. But she stood there unmoving, locking her conflicting feelings tight in her chest, keeping her face composed and severe; and that afternoon she returned again, determined not to shrink at the last moment, though she dreaded the long hours of facing the silent hostility and dislike.

When night came at last, and the air declined swiftly into the sharp cold of a July night, and the natives moved off, picking up old tins they had brought to drink from, or a ragged coat, or the corpse of some rat or veld creature they had caught while working and would cook for their evening meal, and she knew her task was finished, because tomorrow Dick would be here, she felt as if she had won a battle. It was a victory over these natives, over herself and her repugnance of them, over Dick and his slow, foolish shiftlessness. She had got far more work out of these savages than he ever had. Why, he did not even know how to handle natives!