Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

She visited the village anyway, every morning after making sure her hospital was going well. She brought with her either Clever or Zebedee, for one of them had to be left in charge of the patients. She had patients in the huts, the ones with the slow lingering diseases, over whom she and the n'ganga would exchange looks that acknowledged what they were careful not to say. For if there was one thing this bush doctor understood as well and better than any ordinary doctor, it was the value of a cheerful mind; and it was evident that most of his muti, spells, and practices were elaborated for this one purpose: to keep going an optimistic immune system. But when she and this clever man exchanged a certain kind of look, then it meant that before long their patient would soon be up among the trees in the new graveyard, which was in fact the AIDS or Slim cemetery, and well away from the village. The graves were dug deep, because it was feared the evil that had killed these people could escape and attack others.

Sylvia knew, because Clever had told her – Rebecca herself had not – that this sensible and practical woman, on whom both she and the priest relied, believed that her three children had died and a fourth was ill because her younger brother's wife, who had always hated her, had employed a stronger n'ganga than the local one to attack the children. She was barren, that was the trouble, and believed that Rebecca was responsible, having paid for charms and potions and spells to keep her childless.

Some believed she was childless because in her hut were to be found more stolen things from the abandoned hospital than any other. The object known to be most dangerous among the stolen goods was the dentist's chair that had once been in the middle of the village, where children played over it, but it had been taken away and thrown into a gulley, to get rid of its malign influences. Vervet monkeys played over it, without harm, and once Sylvia had seen an old baboon sitting in it, a piece of grass between his lips, looking around him in a contemplative way, like a grandfather sitting out his days on a porch.

Edna Pyne got into the old lorry to drive to the Mission because she was being pursued by what she called her black dog, which even had a name. 'Pluto is snapping at my heels again,' she might say, claiming that the two house dogs Sheba and Lusaka knew when this shadowy haunter was present and growled at it. Cedric would not laugh at this little fantasy when she made a joke of it all, but said she was getting as bad as the blacks with their superstitious nonsense. Even five years ago Edna had had women friends, on nearby farms, whom she could drive over to visit when she was down, but now none was left. They were farming in Perth (Australia), in Devon; they had 'taken the gap' to South Africa – they had gone. She hungered for women's talk, feeling she was in a desert ofmaleness, her husband, the men working in the house and garden, the people coming to the house, government inspectors, surveyors, contour ridge experts, and the new black busybodies always imposing more and more regulations. All were men. She hoped to find Sylvia free for a bit of a chat, though she did not like Sylvia as much as Edna knew she deserved: she was to be admired, yes, but she was a bit of a nut. When she got to Father McGuire's house, it seemed empty. She went into the cool dark inside, and Rebecca emerged from the kitchen with a cloth in her hands that should have been cleaner. But the drought was limiting the cleanliness in her own house too: the borehole was lower than it had ever been.

‘Is Doctor Sylvia here?'

' She is at the hospital. There's a girl in labour. And Father McGuire has taken the car and gone to visit the other Father at the Old Mission. '

Edna sat as if her knees had been hit. She let her head fall back against the chair, and shut her eyes. When she opened them Rebecca stood in front of her still, waiting.

' God,’ said Edna, ' I've had enough, I really have. '

‘I shall make you some tea,’ said Rebecca, turning to go.

‘How long do you think the doctor will be?'

'I don't know. It's a difficult birth. The baby's in the breech position.'

This clinical phrase made Edna open her eyes wide. Like most of the old whites she had a mind in compartments – that is, more than most of us. She knew that some blacks were as intelligent as most whites, but by intelligent she meant educated, and Rebecca was working in a kitchen.

When the tea tray was put in front of her and Rebecca turned to leave, Edna heard herself say: 'Sit down, Rebecca.’And added, 'Do you have time?'

Rebecca did not have time, she had been chasing after herself all morning. Since her son, the one who went to fetch the water for her from the river, was with his father, who had drunk last night to the point of raging insanity, she, Rebecca, had had to carry water down from this kitchen, having asked permission from the Father, not once but five times. The water in the house well was low: water seemed to be creeping back down into the earth everywhere, always harder to reach. But Rebecca could see that this white woman was in a state, and needed her. She sat and waited. She was thinking it was lucky Mrs Pyne was here with her car because the Father had taken the car and Sylvia had said it might be necessary to run the patient into hospital for a caesarean.

Words that had been bubbling and simmering inside Edna for hours, for days, now came out in a hot, resentful accusing self-pitying rush, though Rebecca was not the right auditor for them. Nor was Sylvia, if it came to that. ‘I don't know what to do, ' Edna said, her eyes wide and staring, not at Rebecca but at the edge of blue beads on the fly net over the tea tray. 'I'matmy wits' end. I think my husband has gone mad. Well, they are mad, aren't they, men, aren't they, wouldn't you agree?' Rebecca who last night had been dodging blows and embraces from her raving husband smiled and said that yes, men were sometimes difficult.

‘You can say that again. Do you know what he's done? He's actually bought another farm. He says that if he didn't one of the Ministers' d grab it, so why not him. I mean, if you people got it, that would be all right, but he says he can pay for it, it was offered to the government and they didn't want it so he's buying it. He is building a dam there, near the hills. '

' A dam,’ said Rebecca, coming to life: she had been drowsing as she sat. ' Okay... a dam... okay. '

'Well, the moment he's built it one of those black swine'll grab it, that's what they do, they wait until we do something nice, like a dam, and then they grab. So what are you doing this for, I ask him, but he says...’ Edna was sitting with a biscuit in one hand and a cup in the other. Her words were tumbling out too fast to let her drink. 'I want to leave, Rebecca, do you blame me? Well, do you? This is not my country, well you people say so and I agree with you but my husband says it is his as much as yours, and so he's bought...’ A wail escaped her. She set down the cup, then the biscuit, shook a handkerchief from her handbag and wiped her face with it. Then she sat silent a moment, leaned forward and frowningly rubbed the blue bead edging between her fingers. 'Pretty beads. Did you make that?'

‘Yes, I made it. '

' Pretty. Well done. And there's another thing. The government criticises us all the time, they call us all these names. But in our compound there's three times the number of people that should be there, they come in every day from the communal land, and we feed them, we are feeding all these people because they are starving on the communal land in the drought, well you know that, don't you, Rebecca?'

' Okay. Yes. That is true. They are starving. And Father McGuire has set up a feeding point at the school, because the children come up to school so hungry they just sit and cry. '