A Blade of Grass (11 page)

A
FAINT PLUME
of yellow dust appears above the road that runs past the farm called Kudufontein, a familiar sight to those who live in this district, a signal of the passage of a vehicle between the farms that lie along these sandy roads in the back country near the border.

From the window of the house Märit watches the column of dust as it approaches, fast-moving, thick, perhaps more than one vehicle, someone in a hurry to be somewhere. Is it Ben? she wonders. For some reason she remembers a line from a Sunday school Bible lesson: “By day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire.”

Two cars come slowly up the drive towards the house—the old blue Mercedes of her neighbors, the van Stadens, and behind it a white Land Rover with dark-tinted windows. There is no third vehicle, no red pickup truck, no Ben.

Märit draws back slightly from the window, her eyes fixed on the Land Rover, on the sinister dark windows.

The cars come to a halt on the driveway in front of the house with a loud crunching of tires on gravel. For a moment nobody alights from the vehicles, nobody reveals himself, while beyond the two cars the plume of yellow dust slowly revolves in the still air, then settles back towards the road.

It is Connie van Staden who first appears, easing herself from the Mercedes, patting away the wrinkles in her dress: a middle-aged woman in dark clothes, dressed formally, dressed in the way one would on a Sunday visit to church, not in the more casual manner of a visit to a neighbor. Her husband, Koos, appears next, unfamiliar to Märit in his suit, but still
wearing his ever-present slouch hat. Connie says a word to him across the roof of the car and he takes off his hat. They both peer at the house for a moment, then turn their attention to the white Land Rover.

The driver’s door swings open and a policeman in a gray uniform steps out, settling his cap on his head and flexing his knees to free the cloth of his trousers from his crotch. Märit recognizes him—the sergeant from the police station in Klipspring, a big, boyish man with a soft face. Sergeant Jonker—no, Joubert. He looks at the house before nodding to the van Stadens, and all three turn to look at the Land Rover expectantly.

The man who gets out from the passenger side is a stranger to Märit. A stranger in mirrored sunglasses and civilian clothes: a light-colored safari suit, knee socks, tan desert boots—the uniform favored by government officials during the summer months.

Märit draws back from the window as the man looks up at the house. She notices the posture of deference the sergeant takes with this stranger, and the way that Koos and Connie van Staden look to him, waiting for him to take the first action. Märit keeps her eyes on this man in his safari suit, with his eyes obscured behind the reflective sunglasses. He seems sinister, ominous, foreboding creating an aura around his body. She knows he brings bad news.

As he mounts the steps Märit moves even farther back into the room. She does not want to meet this stranger at her door, she does not want to admit him to her house—if she does not let him enter, he will go away with his news untold, and whatever has happened will not have happened.

The stranger lifts the brass knocker on the door, the knocker in the shape of an ox head, and lets it fall three times, summoning her.

Märit stands paralyzed, staring at the door.

The knocking sounds again, this time made by a hand, bare knuckles on the wood, and she knows it is the stranger who knocks, summoning her.

Her footsteps take her to the door, each step weighted with dread.

As she opens the door the stranger steps back, his hand raised to knock again, his hand lifted as if in a fist against her. Startled, he lowers his arm and steps away from Märit. It is Connie van Staden who steps forward now, her mouth squeezed into a grim line.

“Oh, Märit, Märit.” She lifts her arms to Märit, opening them to embrace. “Oh, Märit, I’m so sorry to come like this.”

The fear and the pity in Connie’s eyes cause Märit to retreat, away from Connie’s reach—she does not want to be embraced by this fear and this pity.

Her throat is tight but she forces the words out. “What has happened? It’s Ben, isn’t it? Tell me what’s happened.”

Connie wrings her hands together. “Oh, Märit, it’s terrible! I don’t know what to say.”

Her husband clears his throat and looks down at his shoes and puts his hands behind his back and avoids Märit’s eyes.

She turns to the stranger. “Is it about Ben? What’s happened to him?”

The policeman steps forward, removing his cap. “Mevrou Laurens, I’m Sergeant Joubert. We met before, you remember, in town, with your husband, when you came to the police station…” He does not finish his sentence.

Now the stranger removes his sunglasses, and Märit sees his eyes, which have no fear, which have no pity or concern, but which are watchful light blue eyes, regarding her with curiosity.

“Our news is not good, I am afraid, Mevrou. Perhaps we had better go inside, where you can sit down.”

He speaks English to her, but with a thick Afrikaans accent, the words clipped and guttural.

“It’s Ben, isn’t it? I know it is. Tell me what has happened to him.” She puts a hand on the door frame to steady herself against the sudden weakness in her legs.

Connie takes Märit by the elbow. “Come, it’s better that we go inside,” she says, and Märit allows herself to be led to a chair.

The others sit, except the stranger. Märit looks up at him, waiting.

“There was an explosion earlier today at the radio tower outside Klipspring. I regret to tell you, Mevrou Laurens, that your husband was killed in that explosion.”

The air goes out of Märit’s lungs, as if this man has punched her in the chest.

So there it is—Death. She knew it was Death the moment she saw this
stranger get out of the Land Rover. He has the air of Death around him. He is someone used to talking about Death.

Märit tilts her head back and tries to breathe. The meaning of the words sinks in. Then she grasps—at hope. “By the radio tower? But Ben wasn’t at the radio tower. He went to the station. Why should he be at the radio tower? That’s in the other direction. There must be a mistake.” She swings her head from face to face, searching for confirmation.

Sergeant Joubert takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry, but there is no mistake, Mevrou. I knew your husband. I recognized him.”

The reference to Ben in the past tense is like a door slamming shut on hope.

The stranger sits down now and crosses one leg over the other and looks at her with his watchful, curious expression, without visible sympathy in his pale blue eyes.

“Who are you?” Märit demands angrily, turning on him, because who else is there to blame except this man who comes with Death. “What is your name?”

“Forgive me, I did not introduce myself.” He slips a laminated card from his breast pocket and places it on the polished surface of the coffee table. “Gideon Schoon. Security Branch—Defense Forces.” Märit ignores the card, and after a moment he retrieves it and buttons it into his pocket again.

“What is this to do with you?” Märit says. “Ben wasn’t at the radio tower. He went to the station to fetch a load of seedlings.” She shakes her head, trying to grasp everything that has been said. “What explosion?”

“A bomb was planted at the tower, sometime last night we believe. A terrorist action. It appears that the terrorists also buried a land mine on the road near the tower. Your husband was in his truck, on that road. Evidently his vehicle triggered the land mine, killing him in the resulting explosion.”

She can’t form an image to go with his words. “Killing him…?” she mutters. Then she looks at Connie and Koos van Staden, and at the sergeant. “Where is Ben?” she appeals to them. “I want to see him. I don’t believe any of this. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“First it is necessary for me to ask you some questions, Mevrou,” Schoon says. “Then we can take you to see your husband.”

“Are you sure it’s Ben?” Märit asks the sergeant, ignoring the other man. “How do you know for sure?”

“It was his truck, Mevrou, the red pickup.”

“There are other trucks like that.”

“I’m sorry, but it was him. I recognized him…the body.” He looks down at his hands, shaking his head.

Connie van Staden rises to her feet and puts a reassuring hand on Märit’s shoulder. “Can’t these questions wait, Captain Schoon? It’s not the right time now.”

“Time is of the essence,” he replies. “I intend to apprehend these criminals.” He leans forward to Märit. “Now, the road your husband was on, Mevrou Laurens, it does not lead to this farm. There is a fork outside of Klipspring that branches away towards the radio tower and the border. Can you tell me why your husband would be on that road, traveling in the opposite direction from his home?”

“He went to the station, to fetch seedlings that he had ordered. He wants to plant almond trees. He would have come straight home.”

“Do you have acquaintances over there?” Schoon asks. “Maybe he was going to visit someone? Does he go that way often?”

“No,” she says slowly, shaking her head.

“No? Let me ask you this, Mevrou. Do you or your husband have contact with any persons across the border? Did he ever travel there? Did you go with him?”

“Where? I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Schoon studies Märit a moment without speaking.

“Did your husband get on well with the
kaffirs
who work here?”

“That is not a word Ben uses. Neither do I!”

“Very well,” Schoon comments with a shrug. “Let me put it this way—what was your husband’s relation with his workers? Did he discuss the political situation with them?”

“Ben treats the workers well. Fairly. With respect.”

“And you, Mevrou? Do you socialize with the blacks? Do you have them into the house?”

Märit does not answer. She looks at Schoon’s hands, which are small and thick, with strands of fine dark hair growing on the back of his fingers,
and the sight of his hands fills her with revulsion, almost a sexual revulsion against his maleness. There is an over-sweet smell of hair oil around him. He seems to her not a man, but some kind of animal, compact and thick-bodied, in his safari suit and his knee socks, and with his small hyena-like eyes.

She wants to stand up from her chair and order him from the house, this announcer of Death, this scavenger. But her limbs feel heavy, leaden. And what is the use, what will change? Märit stares past him, through him. It doesn’t matter—nothing matters. What is this man to her? Nothing.

“How would you describe your husband’s political sympathies, Mevrou Laurens?”

“Ben is a farmer.” She cannot bring herself to use the past tense. Nothing of this is quite real to her. Ben will come back. This strange interrogation is only a dream, outside of reality.

Schoon waits for her to continue, and when she does not, he jerks his head with a small gesture of irritation. “Ja, we know that, but did he favor the present way of life here, did he want change, did he work with anybody from outside? Have there been strangers visiting him? Does he know about explosives?”

Märit turns on him angrily. “Why are you asking me all these questions? Where is my husband?”

“I need to know these things, Mevrou Laurens,” Schoon answers, unperturbed.

The faces look at Märit expectantly, as if some revelation on her part will explain away everything.

“Ben is a farmer, that’s all,” Märit says.

Then Koos van Staden clears his throat apologetically and says, “If you don’t mind me saying this, Captain Schoon, I knew Ben Laurens, and I think you are barking up the wrong tree here, so to speak.”

Schoon runs a finger across each side of his mustache. He turns his head to look at Koos, then at the sergeant, who sits gazing down at his hands sheepishly. Schoon focuses his attention on Märit again. He takes a deep breath and softens his voice as he speaks. “We are all on the same side here. These terrorists, these criminals who come into our country at night like cowards and plant their bombs, killing innocent people, they are the
enemy. Innocent people, Mevrou, like your husband. I don’t have to tell you that we are all in danger—anyone who lives on an isolated farm is in danger. You might not like me, because I have to bring the bad news and ask the questions, and I accept that—but I have to ask them.”

Schoon looks around the room again. “With your permission, Mevrou, I will have to bring a team in here and question your workers.”

And if I refuse, she wants to say, but does not because she sees the utter disregard for her opinion in his eyes.

She feels very tired and heavy, and she feels old, so very old and so very far away from these three strangers in her house. None of this makes sense to her. Yet at the same time a terrible, final certainty has descended on her.

“I don’t care what you do,” Märit mutters.

Ben is gone. Ben is dead. Without him the farm means nothing to her. She suddenly feels an intense loneliness. If only her mother were here, to hold her, to tell her that everything will be all right. But she is alone in all the world now.

Connie rises and touches Märit’s shoulder. “We will take you to him, child. Come now,” she says softly, holding out her arms, “we will take you to him.”

I
N
K
LIPSPRING
, a town of tidy gardens and small houses on quiet streets, there is a church on Wolmarans Street, a plain white church with a black spire, surrounded by neat lawns behind a wrought-iron fence. It is to this church, to the small graveyard behind the church, that Märit has allowed them to bring Ben.

She has allowed them to bring him here because she is numb, lethargic, moving with the great weariness upon her. Ben should be buried on the farm, but Connie van Staden tells her this is for the best, and Predikant Venter tells her this is for the best, that Ben should be buried here in hallowed ground, amongst his own kind, and not on the farm.

She has allowed them to bring him here, rather than to the farm, because she is weary, and cannot see beyond the requirements of each moment, each daily task of washing herself, and dressing, and sitting in the car, and stepping from it onto the grounds of this church. She cannot see the future.

The sun is a hard yellow disk in the sky and the clods of earth next to the grave turn gray and dusty in the heat, and the people gathered around the grave give off a smell of perspiration and perfume that is turning stale.

Märit stands silent in her dark clothes and her veil. Her thick chestnut hair is drawn into a tight bun on her neck, so tight that it pinches and pulls the skin of her scalp. In the hard sunlight the face of Predikant Venter is sallow, and the farmers and their wives shift uncomfortably in their formal dark clothes. Perspiration trickles under heavy cloth, on the pale flesh hidden under heavy cloth. The words drone from the lips of the Predikant, the way they drone when he speaks in church on Sundays.

Now is the time of burial. Märit does not weep. Weeping will come later. All she knows now is that she has crossed a river, and everything that she once called her life has been left behind on the other side. That place will now be called the past. And what happens from now on will be called her life. There is a before and an after. Everything will be different now.

In the hard sky a hawk drifts on the current, up there where the air is cool. And somewhere unseen beyond the neat town, the drone of a tractor is faintly audible. And here a body is placed in the earth, and covered up, and everything will be different after this.

The dry soil falls upon the coffin and Märit looks away. It is unbearable to think of his body in there—not even a body, just mangled flesh.

Märit does not weep. But as the clods of earth thud onto the coffin in its cavity in the earth she wants to step forward and say, No, not here, he would have wanted to lie in the earth on the farm, on his own land. It was all he wanted, to have his own land.

A
FTERWARDS
, when the procession of cars carrying neighbors and acquaintances has driven out to the farm, throwing the columns of dust into the air, and the women have set out food and made coffee, and the Predikant has said his platitudes, and Connie has hovered around Märit like a mother hen—after all this, Märit can only wait for them to be gone from her house.

But the women watch her, to know how she is affected, how she is bearing up. Because what if it happened to them? It could have been one of us, they think. What will happen to us? We can’t hold out like this forever. There are those who wait just across the border, and in our own towns and cities, in our own houses. They will not go away, there are too many of them, a whole continent just waiting to fall upon us, to drive us out of our country. But where can we go?

The women look at Märit and wonder why she does not weep, why she does not show her grief. The generous amongst them tell themselves that she is in shock, poor thing, and the ungenerous think to themselves that she does not weep because she is cold, or she did not love him, she is a cold one, never quite friendly, never making an effort to fit in. Not one of us.

They want her to weep, for their own fear. And they ask themselves what she will do now. She cannot manage the farm on her own, a frail thing like her, not on her own. She will have to sell. She will leave them and go back to the city.

Märit waits for them to be gone. She does not want to share her loss and her grief with these strangers. She does not want to eat their home-baked cakes and drink the coffee they have made, or listen to their voices, to their regrets and their condolences, or to feel the eyes of the women upon her, or to see the somber men plotting revenge.

The men stand on the veranda, in their dark suits that are only worn for church, for weddings and funerals, smoking their pipes, passing around a surreptitious flask of brandy, and their eyes move casually across the fields and the orchards and the cattle in the distant field. How much will the farm bring on the market, they wonder, and they do calculations in their heads, comparing the worth of this farm with the worth of their own land. But now is not a good time for buying and selling, not now.

The men mutter amongst themselves, quietly, so that the women may not hear. What is the government doing? they ask. This death has been a death of one of their own. For them, Ben was one of their own. What are the police doing about these terrorists who come across the border like thieves and burn the farms? Where is the army? Somebody has to put a stop to it—if not the government, then they will do it themselves, for they are an independent and hardy people, like their Boer ancestors, ready to fight for the land. We have made this land and we will not be moved, they say. The young van Staden son wants to saddle up his horse and ride to the kraal this very moment. We will take care of it, he says. The guns must come out now.

On the farm there is no work being done this day. In the kraal there are low voices and careful movements. The children are scolded if they laugh too loud, and they fall silent under the worried frowns of their elders. In the kraal the people wait, for everything can change now.

D
USK ARRIVES
at last, and with it silence. The doves fall silent. The long shadows from the eucalyptus trees creep across the lawn and across
the rose garden, the long shadows stretch across the veldt as the sun fades and weakens. The long shadows cloak the house, the empty house where Märit sits waiting for darkness.

She drinks from a tumbler of gin and lime cordial, the bottles on the table next to her with her cigarettes and lighter. She sits waiting for darkness in her funeral dress.

I am a widow now, she tells herself. But was I ever really a wife? I wanted to be. That was the state which Ben found me in—waiting. Waiting to be a wife. Because I wanted to get away from home, and from my dreary job, and from the sameness of my life. I wanted life to begin, real life. And I thought that when I found a man, when a man found me, my life would start, my real life.

My mother liked him, she liked his manners, he was charming to her. She liked Ben because he was gentlemanly, he held doors open for women and stood when they came into a room. Sometimes he brought her flowers. But Mother had her doubts, not about him, but about me, about me living up here. She told me I wasn’t suited to be a farmer’s wife. She had her doubts about me, and when I disagreed, she said that she knew me, knew the deeper side of me that I didn’t even know myself yet. I came here for Ben, because of Ben, because I was married and thought it would be a good life and that I could do it.

Märit stretches out her arm and reaches for her glass of gin, feeling the slackness in her body. The white walls of the room have faded to gray, the outlines of the furniture are blurred, the landscape beyond the windows has receded under a cloak of darkness as night falls. Near the river the croaking of frogs begins. A cricket chirps outside the window. The distant pulse of the generator beats.

I have walked upright today, Märit thinks. I have held my head up when I wanted to fall upon the ground. I did not weep. Once I was a married woman and now I am a widow because my husband is dead. Now I am without family, without children, without friends. Now I am alone.

Dusk becomes evening, and evening turns to night. The only light is the glow of her cigarette and the periodic flash of the lighter. The glass of gin is steadily emptied, and replenished.

It matters little now if I smoke too much and drink too much. What does it matter now? Who is there to care?

I came here for Ben, because I thought I loved him, but I don’t know if I loved him. I decided I wanted to get married and I did. And Ben wanted me. He wanted a wife. But did he love me? We made love, but was it love? He liked it, liked me. And I enjoyed being enjoyed. He was different in bed, not so well-mannered. Hungry. Like me. We were different in bed, two other people, or maybe we were our real selves. There was something desperate in our lovemaking, some desperation to meet each other that made it so intense, because in the daylight we did not really meet, and we both sensed it, and we were afraid to know that.

Märit reaches for her cigarettes and finds the package empty. She rises to her feet, stumbling against the side of the couch, unsteady, her head spinning. On her way to the kitchen through the dark house she bumps into the walls; her body seems not to belong to her, to be some clumsy object attached to her self.

In the kitchen she turns on a single lamp and finds the carton of cigarettes and fumbles one out of the package. The taste in her mouth is sour when she lights it, and she tosses the cigarette into the sink. She is hungry. From the shelf she takes down a can of baked beans, then spends a long minute scrabbling in the drawer for an opener.

Standing at the counter she reaches into the can and digs out the saucecovered beans with her fingers, stuffing them into her mouth, ravenous, swallowing, barely chewing the sticky mass.

Her fingers taste of tobacco, and the wetness across her lips makes her think of Ben’s hands. She remembers his hands vividly. A man’s hands can arouse tenderness, or revulsion. They always seem so naked, so intimate. Unlike the face, which can be a mask. But the hands are just hands and they cannot be disguised. A man’s hands reveal who he is.

Ben’s hands were sure, confident. Quite soft at first, but when he started farming, the skin on his palms toughened, but they were soft still, like the fine leather of kid gloves. And there were always little nicks and scrapes on his fingers, cuts from a tool or a piece of wire or just a scrape against a stone—the marks of his life on the land. His hands changed as he changed.

Yet his hands always remained gentle, and sure, and gave me pleasure.

She draws her hand across her mouth and licks the sauce from her fingers. That time when he put his hand between my legs and drew it across my mouth and kissed my own wetness from my lips. She licks her fingers and stuffs them into her mouth. When he put his mouth on me, and kissed me between my legs, and then kissed me on my mouth. I wanted that. I liked it when he did that, but I was too shy to ask him, to say the words.

And that last morning, when I did ask him, and he was in too much of a hurry to get to town, too eager to get the seedlings for the almond trees that he thought he would see grow on his land. And then he never came back.

Märit slumps against the counter. She lets the can of beans fall to the floor and raises her dress, sliding her hand down the front of her underwear, like her husband had done, clutching at her own flesh the way he had clutched at her.

She presses deeper, clenching on her fingers, wanting the strangeness of it to fill her, to make her remember, to make her forget.

She crumples to the floor, curling into herself, a cry of distress escaping from her throat.