The Grass Is Singing

by Doris Lessing

are.” The strongest emotion of a strongly organized society spoke in his voice, and it took the backbone out of Dick’s resistance.

But he could not bring himself to accept Charlie’s

“I’ll take this place over as it stands, and give you enough to clear your debts. I’ll engage a manager to run it till you get back from the coast. You must go away for six months at the very least, Turner. It doesn’t matter where you go. I’ll see that you have the money to do it. You can’t go on like this, and that is the end of it.” But Dick did not give in so easily. He fought for four hours. For four hours they argued, walking up and down beneath the trees.

She did not look at Dick when he came in. For days at a time she did not speak to him. It was as if he did not exist for her. She seemed to be sunk fathoms deep in some dream of her own. She only came to life, only noticed what she was doing, when the native came in to do some little thing in the room. Then she never took her eyes off him.

Charlie Slatter did not waste time. He drove round the district from farm to farm, trying to find someone who would take over the Turners’ place for a few months.

But when he went over to Dick, to tell him, he found that while he had become reconciled to the necessity of leaving, he could not be persuaded to leave at once. Charlie, Dick, and the young man, Tony Marston, stood in the middle of a field; Charlie hot and angry and impatient (for he could not bear to be thwarted at the best of times), Dick stubborn and miserable, Marston sensitive to the situation and trying to efface himself. “Damn it, Charlie, why kick me off like this? I’ve been here fifteen years!”

“Charity,” said Dick, in that remote grieved voice. “It’s not charity. I’m buying it as a business concern. I want the grazing. I will run my cattle here with yours, and you can go on with your crops as you like.” Yet he was thinking it was charity, was even a little surprised at himself for this complete betrayal of his business principles.

In the minds of all three of them the word “charity” was written in big black letters, obscuring everything else. And they were all wrong. It was an instinctive self-preservation. Charlie was fighting to prevent another recruit to the growing army of poor whites, who seem to respectable white people

Tony went back to the house with Dick, agreeably surprised that he had not been in the country more than a couple of months before finding a job. He was given a thatched, mud-walled hut at the back of the house.

he had the conventionally “progressive” ideas about the color bar, the superficial progressiveness of the idealist that seldom survives a conflict with self-interest.

About a week before they were due to leave, Dick said to Mary over the lunch table, “How about packing?” She nodded, after two repetitions of the question, but did not reply. “You must pack, Mary,” said Dick gently, in that quiet hopeless voice with which he always addressed her. But when he and Tony returned that night, she had done nothing.

“Complete nervous breakdown,” diagnosed Tony,

Three days before they were to leave, Tony asked to stay behind for the afternoon, because he was not feeling well. A touch of the sun, perhaps; he had a bad headache, his eyes hurt, and nausea moved in the pit of his stomach.

“Poor Dick,” she said, for the last time, and did not think of him again. She got out of bed and stood by the window.

When she was gone, she thought, this house would be destroyed. It would be killed by the bush, which had always hated it, had always stood around it silently, waiting for the moment when it could advance and cover it, for ever, so that nothing remained.

A native stood there, outside the house. She put her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream. Then she saw it was another native, who held in his hand a piece of paper. He held it as illiterate natives always handle printed paper: as if it is something that might explode in their faces. She went towards him and took it. It said: “Shall not be back for lunch. Too busy clearing things up. Send down tea and sandwiches.” This small reminder from the outer world hardly had the power to rouse her. She thought irritably that here was Dick again; and holding the paper in her hand she went back into the house, opening the windows with an angry jerk. What did the boy mean by not keeping the windows open when she had told him so many times. . . .

She knew she must keep her mind on three things: the trees, so that they should not rush on her unawares; the door to one side of her where Dick might come; and the lightning that ran and danced, illuminating stormy ranges of cloud.

But the scream continued, in her stomach, choking her; and she lifted her hands, clawlike, to ward him off. And then the bush avenged itself: that was her last thought. The trees advanced in a rush, like beasts, and the thunder was the noise of their coming. As the brain at last gave way, collapsing in a ruin of horror, she saw, over the big arm that forced her head back against the wall, the other arm descending. Her limbs sagged under her, the lightning leaped out from the dark, and darted down the plunging steel. Moses, letting her go, saw her roll to the floor.

First he dropped the weapon sharply on the floor, as if in fear; then he checked himself and picked it up. He held it over the veranda wall under the now drenching downpour, and in a few moments withdrew it. Now he hesitated, looking about him. He thrust the metal in his belt, held his hands under the rain, and, cleansed, prepared to walk off through the rain to his hut in the compound, ready to protest his innocence. This purpose, too, passed. He pulled out the weapon, looked at it, and simply tossed it down beside Mary, suddenly indifferent, for a new need possessed him.

His enemy, whom he had outwitted, was asleep.

Contemptuously, the native turned away, and walked back to the house. It seemed he intended to pass it, but as he came level with the veranda he paused, resting his hand on the wall, looking over. It was black, too dark to see. He waited, for the watery glimmer of lightning to illuminate, for the last time, the small house, the veranda, the huddled shape of Mary on the brick, and the dogs who were moving restlessly about her, still whining gently, but uncertainly. It came: a prolonged drench of light, like a wet dawn. And this was his final moment of triumph, a moment so perfect and complete that it took the urgency from thoughts of escape, leaving him indifferent. When the dark returned he took his hand from the wall, and walked slowly off through the rain towards the bush. Though what thoughts of regret, or pity, or perhaps even wounded human affection were compounded with the satisfaction of his completed revenge, it is impossible to say. For, when he had gone perhaps a couple of hundred yards through the soaking bush he stopped, turned aside, and leaned against a tree on an ant heap. And there he would remain, until his pursuers, in their turn, came to find him.