A Blade of Grass (30 page)

Märit pushes away from him; his hand falls away from her breast. She rises to her feet, looks down at him, then turns and flees towards the house. Swiftly she runs into the house and straight to her room, where she locks the door behind her. She sits on the bed, listening to the beat of her fearful heart.

After a while she gets up and unlocks the door. She is ashamed. Not of her desire, but of her fear. Will she ever be free of fear? So she unlocks the door and returns to sit on the bed and waits.

Eventually Märit hears his step on the veranda, and the closing of the door, and the bolt sliding home. She imagines his tread on the slate floor as he sidles down the corridor to her room.

At the last moment she springs across the room and turns the key in the lock. She holds her breath, sensing him on the other side of the door. The handle turns slowly and the door moves a fraction, as if from the pressure of a hand. Märit stares at the handle.

The handle is released. Märit waits, hardly breathing. Slowly the handle turns again, and then is released.

She stands a long time at the door, listening, frightened of herself, of what she has done, of what she wants. And when her desire is gone, and when her fear is gone, and when the night is just a night, she crawls into bed with a sense of betrayal and bitterness. With a sense of failure.

Now she knows how the story ends.

M
ÄRIT DOES NOT SPEAK
to Khoza in the morning. She does not look at him. He does not speak to her, he does not look at her.

When she enters the kitchen and sees him at the table with Tembi, Märit pours herself a cup of tea and carries it to her room, where she waits until she hears Khoza leave the house. Only then does she go back to the kitchen.

Tembi says, “What is between you and Khoza?”

“Nothing. What do you mean?”

“You don’t say ‘good morning’ to him, you don’t look at him, you act as if he is not here.”

Märit shrugs.

Tembi says, “What is between you?”

“There is nothing.”

“But Khoza does not say anything to you either. He looked at you with anger when you took your tea.”

“Ask him.”

“No, I am asking you.”

Märit reaches for a rusk.

Tembi says, “What happened between you last night?”

“Nothing happened. We sat by the fire for a while after you went in, and then I came in to bed myself.”

“And Khoza, did he come to bed with you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Why are you questioning me like this? You’re imagining something that didn’t happen.”

Tembi moves so that she can see Märit’s face. “You are not honest with me.”

“Stop this, Tembi.”

“I see it in your face. You have something to hide.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I heard Khoza come to your room last night.”

“My door was locked.” Märit cannot prevent the blush rising to her face.

“Your face betrays you,” Tembi says with sudden venom in her voice. “You lie to me.”

Märit turns on her. “All right! You want the truth? Khoza tried to kiss me, he tried to force himself on me after you had gone to bed. That’s what happened!” The lie is out, too late to retract. But the truth is impossible to tell.

“And you let him.”

“No, I did not! I came into the house and locked my door. Yes, he tried to get in, but the door was locked.”

“You want him. I see the way you look at him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I wouldn’t lower myself to his level.”

“Why? Because you think he is not good enough for you?”

“You’re putting words into my mouth. Either I want him or I don’t want him—make up your mind.”

Tembi shakes her head in disbelief and turns away. Beyond her, a figure crosses the garden, framed for a moment in the window—a man in a slouch hat, her husband’s hat—and for an instant Märit sees Ben.

Tembi also notices the resemblance. “You have had a husband, now you want Khoza too.”

The truth is impossible to tell. “Tembi…I promise you…he was not in my room last night. I slept alone.” Half a truth.

In a wounded voice Tembi cries, “Your face betrays you!”

She slams the door behind her as she runs out.

K
HOZA
, wearing the slouch hat and a pair of old corduroy trousers that once belonged to the farmer, finds Tembi standing at the foot of the
vegetable garden, her arms folded tight against her body, her chest heaving with rapid breaths. He carries the shotgun on his shoulder.

He stops and smiles at her, but she jerks her head away and stares in the opposite direction. “You are fighting with Märit? Things do not go well with you and Märit?” He sounds almost pleased.

“I wonder what things go well between her and you!”

Khoza kicks at a pebble.

Glaring at him, Tembi says, “Maybe you would like it more if I left this farm so that you can be with her.”

Khoza shifts the gun to his other shoulder. His voice is low with offended pride. “Why do you say that to me? You know that Märit does not like me.”

“But you like her. You prefer her. Maybe you want to have a white woman.”

“Never!”

Tembi studies his face. “Märit says that you tried to kiss her last night, that you tried to force yourself on her.”

Khoza laughs and makes a spinning motion with his forefinger next to his temple. “That one, she is all mixed up in her head. Smoking the
dagga
has made her thoughts crazy.”

“You shouldn’t give it to her.” She softens her voice. “You didn’t try to kiss her?”

He makes a grimace.

“You don’t want her? You don’t want to be with her and have this farm?”

He recoils. “You are crazy! Maybe the
dagga
is in your head too. Crazy women!” Shaking his head he stalks off.

Tembi bites her lip, frowning with doubt. Then she runs to catch up with him.

They walk apart a little distance, in silence, skirting the river. Suddenly a guinea hen breaks from the underbrush and flutters into the air across the water. Khoza raises the shotgun and tracks its flight until it drops into cover on the opposite bank.

“Why didn’t you shoot it?”

“We don’t need any meat yet. And I need to keep the bullets for other things.” He walks on, then stops. “Maybe I should shoot Märit?”

“Khoza! Don’t say such a thing!”

“No, I don’t mean it. But why should she own all this?” He extends the gun with one arm, making a wide arc. “All of this farm just for her? You should be Missus here, not Märit.”

“But Märit and her husband bought this farm. They paid for it.”

“Did they pay the people who lived here and worked the land?”

“They bought it from the previous farmer. The other family had been here a long time.”

“And who did they buy it from? How did
they
get the land?”

Tembi follows the path that curves towards the gate.

“They stole the land,” Khoza calls out after her. “They took it by force. There were people living here long before the whites came, all over this country, and the whites stole it from them. Märit bought this land from people who had no right to sell it. Were any of us allowed to buy land here? No. We can only have land where the soil is hard and dry, where the rains never come. Or else we have to go to the slums of the cities.” He strides past her towards the farm gate and stops there, looking at the name painted on the gatepost. “Kudufontein!” he exclaims disdainfully, poking the gun barrel at the sign.

“This place is also called Isitimane,” Tembi says. “The Place of Shadows.” She points. “For the big rock there, because it puts its own shadow on the land.”

“They change the names of everything and put their own names on things, and then they tell you there were no names before they came. They took away the name of our country. They make up history. They don’t even call us by our proper names—it’s just boy or
meid.
”

“But Märit is not like that.”

“You don’t think so?”

“She is different. There is goodness in her.”

Khoza disregards her observation. “Everything will be different soon. The land will go back to the people who work it, not those who can buy and sell. It is our land now.” He swings the gun barrel again in a wide arc,
encompassing all the farm. “All of this is ours.” He points up at the house. “That house is yours, Tembi. You can call it whatever you want.” Setting the shotgun against the post he says, “Wait here, I have to get something.”

She leans against the gate with one foot on the lowest rung, slowly rocking back and forth.

Perhaps there is some truth in what Khoza tells her. There were people in the kraal before she came, before Märit came, before the other farmers came. This much she knows—that people like her have always lived on this land. Is not her own mother resting in this very soil now? Does she not belong to this place? And does it not follow then that this place could belong to her?

Her life here has always been defined by whoever lives in the farmhouse, whoever owns the land. Yet she lives there too now. And not only because Märit has invited her. The house and the farm belong to Märit. But if they did not?

For a moment she allows herself to see a new life on the farm: the land fertile and green once more, cattle in the fields, the mealie fields thick with plants, the orchard ripe with fruit. There will be no kraal, no washhouse with cold water taps, no open cooking fires.

She sees herself living in the house, wearing fine clothes, driving a fine car into town, where she will enter any shop she pleases and the shopkeeper will call her “Missus.”

But who else will live on the farm? Where is Märit in this picture? Where is Khoza? This part of the picture is hazy. And what does Khoza mean when he says this land is “ours”? Does he mean the country, or does he mean the farm? Does he mean it is his?

Tembi is still musing on these questions when Khoza returns with a can of paint in his hand and a brush tucked under his arm.

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

“This is our farm now, and we will give it a new name.” He opens the can, dips the brush into the paint, and with a few rough strokes obliterates the word
Kudufontein.
“Here.” He thrusts the brush towards Tembi. “Write a new name.”

Tembi hesitates. She looks up at the house.

“But what name shall I give it?”

“Call it ‘Khoza and Tembi,’” he says, only half in jest.

Should she paint in the old name, Isitimane? But she cannot name the farm with a word of darkness. There is too much shadow on all their lives already.

“Go on,” Khoza urges.

Tembi takes the brush, dips it into the paint, then just above where the other name had been, she writes.

Carefully she paints in the letters, as carefully as when she was a small girl writing her own name in her exercise book. And when she is finished she steps back and looks at what she has written, with the same wonder as that of a small child who writes her name for the first time. With the same wonder that a child realizes when she claims her own name by writing it down. Tembi writes the letters with wonder, claiming the world by her own hand.

“What is that word?” Khoza asks.

“Ezulwini,”
Tembi says. “The Valley of Heaven.”

M
ÄRIT SITS IN FRONT
of the mirror at her dresser. Have I been wrong in everything? she asks herself. A bitterness is upon her, and the sense of having failed in some profound manner.

She studies herself in the mirror—her African dress, her shorn hair that is growing back unevenly. What is she supposed to be? Who is she supposed to be? I have tried to be something other than what I am, she concludes.

Leaving the mirror she goes to stand at the bedroom window. The man in the slouch hat walks past on his way to the sheds, and her heart gives a queer lurch in her chest. Who is he? What does he want? If only it were Ben, she tells herself, and nothing had happened and nothing had changed, and the world was the same as before.

The interloper who walks across the land in her husband’s hat, with the gun across his shoulder, walks as if he already owns the farm. She knows that he wears the hat for her, to signal his intentions.

Looking beyond him, Märit sees Tembi, in her bare feet and simple clothes, a copper necklace at her neck and the blue bracelet on her wrist.

They are part of the landscape, the man and the woman, while she hides in the house.

Märit turns away and sees her reflection again. What have I tried to be, she asks herself, with my colored sarong and my beads and bangles? I can never be like Tembi, I can never be like them.

She removes the bracelets from her wrists and drops them onto the dresser. She unfastens the sarong, the brightly colored sarong from Durban, bought in the African market, and divests herself of this too, peeling it from her body like a skin that does not fit.

She bathes, washing the dust of the farm from her limbs, rinsing the scent of wood smoke from her hair, scrubbing the traces of soil from under her cracked fingernails.

When she has bathed, Märit dresses in her cream-colored suit—so strange to wear these clothes again—and sits at the mirror to apply makeup to her face. Her hands have not forgotten the art: mascara on the eyelashes, a line penciled in to accentuate each eyebrow, a touch of faint blue on the eyelids, so that her eyes become larger, almond shaped, intense. She rubs rouge into her suntanned cheeks, emphasizing the contours of her cheekbones. Finally she applies lipstick, red, her mouth becoming lush and full.

To each earlobe Märit clips a small pearl earring, and around her neck a necklace of pearls. A dab of perfume behind each ear and on her wrists, to cloak her in a scent that is neither dust nor wood smoke nor the sweat of labor. She paints her fingernails red to match her lipstick, covering the broken and ragged edges, and when the varnish is dry she eases her stockinged feet into a pair of high-heeled shoes, then walks up and down the room a few times to accustom herself to the forgotten sensation. There is nothing to be done about her hair except to trim a few ragged strands.

Dusk brings a fading of the light. Somewhere else in the world people are sipping cocktails, an orchestra is playing dance music. Somewhere out there people are living normal lives.

Märit goes through the house and lights all the paraffin lamps, and from the liquor cabinet she takes a bottle of gin, pouring herself a good measure. She sips the liquor, and for a moment she hears the music and the laughter and smells the scent of another world.

W
HEN
T
EMBI ENTERS
the house she does so sheepishly. She wants to tell Märit what she has done about the name on the gate—to apologize, to explain.

She finds the old Märit.

The Märit that she expected to find has disappeared behind a barrier of clothes and lipstick and jewelry. She sees a woman from another world,
the world that she has never entered. This is the Märit who is everything Tembi is not. Her gesture of painting a new name on the farm gate seems childish and puny now.

Khoza enters behind Tembi, pausing to set the gun in a corner. He straightens up and gives a low whistle of appreciation.

“Would anyone like a drink?” Märit says.

Tembi looks upon Märit and her face burns with shame—for everything that she is not, and for what Märit has suddenly become. The betrayal is complete. She burns with shame at the betrayal. Angrily she pushes past Märit and runs to her room.

Khoza looks Märit up and down, then leaves her alone in the room. She swallows her gin and pours a second one.

There is a movement back and forth in the corridor, low whispers. Märit pointedly ignores the sounds. She pours a third drink.

Then Tembi appears—but a Tembi that Märit has never seen before.

A pale pink dress patterned with small flowers, earrings, necklace, high heels that she teeters on, handbag. Märit recognizes all of these, for they are her own. But the face is that of a stranger—powdered, lips bright with red lipstick. The dress is tight, cut low in the front to reveal the fullness of Tembi’s breasts. The effect is crude, almost a parody of herself. But the outcome is undeniable, radiating a raw sexuality; the clothes and makeup accentuating what is hidden.

Tembi takes a glass from the table, fills it, and stands next to the fireplace, posing.

Märit suddenly feels that it is she who is the parody, the grotesque. She feels old.

She remembers the day she came into the house and found Tembi asleep in the bedroom, wearing the blue dress. And she remembers her sexual jealousy. Now it is complete. On that day Tembi seemed just a young girl dressing up, but now she has a new confidence, an awareness of her body that is obvious.

Khoza saunters into the room, and his appearance is like a blow, for he has found Ben’s suit and one of his white shirts and has dressed in them.

Märit staggers unsteadily to her feet. “How dare you! How dare you wear those clothes. Both of you! What right do you have?”

“You don’t need them. You have so many things,” Tembi says, and glances at Khoza quickly for confirmation.

“Don’t look to him. Those are not his clothes, this is not his house.”

Khoza says, “You think you own everything, even us. But not anymore.”

“Neither of you belongs in this house. You are here because of me. And what you are wearing belongs to me.”

Tembi wavers, looking to Khoza for reassurance. “Before, when I came to this house, you wanted us to be the same. You wore clothes like mine. But now, if I wear your clothes, you don’t want that anymore.”

“You forget your place, Tembi.”

“It is not for you to tell me where my place is.”

“He put you up to this, didn’t he?” Märit says.

Khoza laughs.

“Get out of here,” Märit says coldly. “Both of you. Get out of my house and off my farm.”

Tembi turns on her and, to Märit’s great astonishment, says, “
You
get out!”

“What? What did you say?”

“If you don’t like us, then you can go.”

“Yes,” Khoza says. “This is not your place anymore.”

Before Märit can react, Khoza has grasped her by the arm and propelled her towards the door. He pulls it open and shoves her out. The door closes and the bolt rattles home behind her.

Stunned, Märit stands on the threshold gasping. Her head spins. She turns and leans her face against the door, then suddenly pounds on it with both fists.

“Open this door immediately! Tembi, do you hear me? I said, open this door!”

She hears laughter from inside.

Enraged, Märit marches around the side of the house to the kitchen entrance. She hears the key turn in the lock as she reaches the top of the stairs. Her fists beat on the door. “Get out of my house! Both of you! How dare you?”

When she tries to peer in through the side window, rapping on the glass, the curtain is quickly drawn.

“You devil!” Märit screams. She strides away from the house, fuming. Devil, devil, devil! Both of them. Devils! How dare they throw her out of her own house!

She paces furiously back and forth along the driveway, kicking at the gravel. The house is pale in the dusk, the glow of the lamps yellow in the curtained windows. She imagines revenge—setting fire to the house, finding a gun and forcing them out, making them beg for her mercy.

A chill wind blows around her. Night is coming; already the veldt is losing its color. Anger surges back—she will not let them keep her out in the coming night.

Märit pounds on the door with both hands, hard, again and again. There is no answer. She walks all around the house, shaking the windows, finding each one locked and curtained. At her bedroom window, a chink of light shows between the curtains. “Tembi?” She taps lightly on the glass.

Khoza’s face appears.
“Voetsak!”
he yells. The curtain is pulled shut.

The word is like a slap in her face.

She stumbles away from the window and her feet bump against a rock. Without a second thought Märit bends and lifts the rock in both hands, high above her head, and with all the force in her arms she hurls it at the bedroom window.

The glass shatters with a tremendous bang, like a bomb exploding.

In the silence that follows she shouts, “Go ahead, wear my clothes, sleep in my bed. I give you my permission. Go and fuck him on my bed, you little
kaffir
bitch!”

No sound comes from the house. The curtain flutters across the broken glass. Then suddenly the barrel of the shotgun is thrust through the window. Märit screams as blue flame leaps from the gun, and the bang of the shot deafens her. She flings herself to the ground as the second barrel fires, pellets whining over her head like hail.

She crawls away on all fours, very sober now, and truly terrified. Her skirt catches on something, rips. She yanks it loose, and then she is on her feet and running into the night.

W
HEN
the night is fully dark, and only then, Märit crawls out from her hiding place in the trees and makes her way to the kraal, seeking refuge in one of the huts. By the faint flickering illumination of her cigarette lighter she finds a hut with a rough mattress and an old chest of drawers in the room—nothing else. She drags and pushes the chest in front of the door to make a barrier, then curls up on the mattress.

Sometime in the night she wakes to hear the snuffling and snorting of an animal at the door of the hut, and she sits up, waiting for it to go away. She is not afraid. Not of animals. It is people she fears.

I
N THE SOBER HARSHNESS
of morning, Märit rinses her face at the washhouse tap and swallows a mouthful of water. Carrying her shoes in her hand she follows the path back to the kitchen and tries the door. Still locked.

She knocks, and after a moment Khoza appears in the doorway.

“Are you looking for work?” he says.

“No. I want a cup of tea. Not your games.”

“If you want breakfast then you must work.”

“What kind of work?”

“Cleaning, cooking, washing.
Meid
’s work.”

She tries to push past him into the house, but he bars her way with his arm.

“Where is Tembi? I want to talk to her.”

“Tembi doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Let her tell me that to my face. I want to see her.”

Khoza shakes his head.

“I won’t work for you. Why should I?”

He slams the door in her face.

Märit sits down on the upper step. Her skirt is torn along the hem, the thread unraveling. Absently she twines the strand of cotton around her finger, then snaps it off.

“All right,” she mutters. She knocks on the door again.

“All right, I’ll work,” she says when Khoza opens the door.

The trace of a smile crosses his face. “Yes. And you can change your clothes as well. Put on your
meid
’s clothes.”

Märit bows her head, penitent, and edges past him.

She enters her house as a stranger.

In the bedroom, glass litters the floor under the broken window. The curtain has been stuffed into the hole. The bed has not been slept in, she notices with relief.

“You can clean up that glass too,” Khoza says from behind her.

Märit closes the door, then finds her sarong, her beads, her bracelets. She puts a
doek
over her hair. Her soiled and torn suit she stuffs into the closet, along with her shoes and her jewelry. At the bathroom sink she washes the remnants of makeup from her face. When she is dressed again, the only incongruous element is the red varnish on her fingernails, a reminder of another self.

With a few quick steps she crosses to Tembi’s room.

As Märit enters, Tembi quickly pulls the sheet up to cover her face.

“Tembi?”

No answer, just the slight rise and fall of the sheet from Tembi’s breathing.

“Look at me, Tembi. Is this what you want? For me to be your servant?”

No reply.

“This is what
he
wants. We both know it will be his farm if you let it happen.” The sound of Khoza in the kitchen prompts her to draw back. “I wonder how long he will let
you
live here,” Märit mutters from the doorway.

She strides through to the front door and leaves the house. As she passes through the orchard she grabs an apricot from a branch and bites into it hungrily. She pulls down a few more and carries them with her to the river.

White and brown and violet dappled light on the water, the whistling and chirping of the birds, the gurgle of the flow across the rocks. Patches of sunlight breaking through the leaves. Beauty that she does not see.

She is tired of the struggle. She is hungry and she is thirsty and she is
tired. She doesn’t care what happens to the farm, or who lives in the house. Better to let go, to give in, not to struggle and fight anymore.

In the willow branches that hang low over the water, weaverbirds flit back and forth between the nests, which hang like little gourds of woven grass, suspended from the thinnest and most inaccessible of the slender boughs, each with its own round entrance by which the green birds come and go.

Märit counts the nests—at least ten—a small community of families, busy living their lives high in the trees, unconcerned with her. Although they seem to squabble at each other constantly and defend their individual nests fiercely, the birds live in harmony. They make no war, they don’t banish their own kind. Why must we? Märit wonders.