BESSIE HEAD

Bessie Amelia (Emery) Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, in 1937 to a mother from a well-to-do white family and an African who cared for horses. Because of her illicit relationship and unwed pregnancy, her mother was sent to a mental hospital, and Bessie was raised by two adoptive families, one Afrikaner and one “colored,” both of whom ultimately rejected her, leading her to be sent to a missionary orphanage at age thirteen. She became a journalist and taught elementary school and, after a divorce, took her son and emigrated to Botswana. She worked for the Bamangwato Development Farm, where she grew vegetables and made guava jam to sell. There she was inspired by the lives of the men and women in her village of Serowe and began to write fiction. Her three novels are When Rain Clouds Gather (1969), Maru (1971), and A Question of Power (1974), a very autobiographical story about a biracial woman struggling to maintain her sanity as she works to gain acceptance in an African village. She also wrote two other works, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind and Bewitched Crossroad: An African Saga, which combine sociological and historical accounts with elements of folklore, and The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales, a collection of related short stories. She died in 1986.

 

Earth Love

(1993)

The sky was a brilliant red glow when he came home that evening. He could have arrived home at midday, except that to do so was unthinkable. The message must be sent on ahead, passing from mouth to mouth, scurrying along the winding African footpaths. He must then delay, dallying here and there so that on arrival home the wife would have swept the hut, shaken out the sleeping mats and prepared a special meal of good food.

For two months he had been out in the wild bush, collecting the skins of jackal. Now he would sit at home and leisurely piece together these skins into a sleeping blanket. Always in demand, a well-made sleeping blanket can fetch a good price. A jackal blanket with its thick pattern of silver and black hair is very beautiful.

For two months he had lived on wild meat of wild animals, wild berries and wild bush-watermelon.

For two months there had been only the stunning, numbing silence of the bush. Above, in the sky at evening, the brilliant flight of the red-and-white flamingo birds; on the ground, the ceaseless, heavy jogtrot of the foolish kudu; or the startled, delicate flight of buck; or the rustle, rustle of small, round, furry animals among the low thorn bushes.

“Man can never separate himself from earth and sky,” he would often think with tender amazement. “Always they are there, flamingo birds and kudu. Wild, beautiful sunset flamingo birds and the foolish kudu.

“What does a man love best?” he thought. “In the bush I am only a breathing man with eyes and ears alert for the treacherous jackal. Soon, village life will close about me again. I shall drink beer and make the rounds of the village courts, and listen to the repetitious tragedies and comedies of our life. Everywhere there is some sadness. In the village life and in the silence of the bush. Man must continually exchange one sadness for another to make his life a livable thing.”

He felt a cold rush of wind on his face. He looked up at the sky and quickened his homeward pace. There were huge streaks of rain shadows on the east and southwest horizons. It was raining there, far in the distance, and the strong south wind had rushed through it and become a cold, fresh rain-wind. The earth was so flat and broad and wide and endless that the canopy of sky overhead had to stretch with all its might to keep pace with the breadth of the earth. The sky was always brooding about this. It did not like to be outdone by the earth. At evening, it dressed itself up in a brilliant splash of red and yellow glow, leaving the earth a black, stark silhouette of thorn trees. Man had to leave off his intense preoccupation with the earth and raise his eyes to the sky. Then, it seemed, the eyes and soul of man became the wild, beautiful sunset flamingo bird flying free in the limitless space of the sky. The ache and pain and uncertainty of earth life was drowned in the peace and freedom of the sky.

“How strange,” he thought. “One part of me is the flamingo bird. The other the foolish kudu. More often I am the foolish kudu, my feet jogging heavily along the ground. I can see neither left nor right nor behind, but only straight ahead. All things beat down on me and I dart off in one blind direction, and another. I am a slow earth man of little wit. I am the foolish kudu. How is it then that my eyes and soul drown in the flight of the wild flamingo bird? Can I be two things at once—the flamingo bird and the foolish kudu? Man cannot separate himself from earth and sky.”

There was a rumble of thunder and a flash of lightning as he entered the village. The rain-wind rushed along the village pathways and swirled about the circular mud huts. The wife was happy to see him but subdued about expressing this happiness. The children came shouting about and he spoke to them with rough, abashed male tenderness. They took the jackal skins to store away in the spare hut and fled out of the yard to continue their interrupted game.

The wife brought the basin of water so that he could wash. “Tell me the news,” he said, taking off his tattered, soiled shirt.

“There isn’t much to tell,” she said, sitting on the ground near him. Then all at once a lot of words poured out so that he could hardly sort out one story from the other.

“Manga’s quiet wife has left him. He beat her severely, so that she had to run to the police camp in the middle of the night. He immediately took in another woman. Then it appears that he made a young girl pregnant and when this young girl called at the house, this other woman beat the young girl. Manga was roaring drunk and beat his other woman almost to death. Her cries were so terrible that the police had to be called. Manga is now in jail. Three teachers and a principal were dismissed for making schoolgirls pregnant. Do you know Sylvia? She works in the shop. The one of whom people say she has no food at home, but dresses like a shop window? People are indignant about her behaviour. It is known that she has slept with many men in the village, but now it seems that her husband took up with a quiet young teacher who is now in the place. It seems that the story was whispered to Sylvia by a snake in the green grass. While the teacher was at work, Sylvia went to her house and opened her belongings. In a suitcase were many letters from Sylvia’s husband. Sylvia waited there and when the young teacher returned home, Sylvia removed her high-heeled shoe and beat her about the head. She almost beat another woman’s child to death. No one can forget this terrible story. Sylvia’s husband has fled away, as he does not want to face the trouble. I received a report from the cattle-post that one of the bulls has his eye damaged. The young one who was not yet castrated. He got into a fight with one of the old bulls who put a horn in his eye. I thought of going to the cattle-post to attend to the matter but then I received word that you were on the way home, so instead I sent instructions about how the eye should be treated.”

She was silent a moment. The husband commented almost to himself, smiling with quiet amusement: “We are all foolish kudus.”

“What is that?” the wife asked, puzzled. She had never heard that expression before. The husband did not reply, and the woman went about her business. She accepted him as he was, a quiet, reserved man. He could never be driven into a quarrel, and all the things in life he looked at with an interested detachment.

The wife brought him a plate of boiled ground millet over which she had put a piece of soft braised meat, spinach and pumpkin. In another plate she had two steaming fresh young mealies. While he ate, the storm clouds gathered overhead and the thunder rumbled. A small black kitten hovered near. Its eyes were grey-green and it was soft and beautiful. He tore off a long shred of meat and put it down. The kitten ate with great delicacy; then it sat down at his feet, shot one straight black leg upwards and began cleaning its tail. Also at his feet the large, fat, brown earth ants were as busy as anything. A huge team scattered over the earth, cutting down blades of grass and carrying them back to the edge of the hole. Another team gathered these deposits of grass from the edge of the hole and all the time he could see their fat round abdomens disappearing into the earth’s depths. He placed his foot over the hole for a few seconds and at once caused great confusion among this well-organised community. The team outside fell back, consulting among themselves, then dropped their blades of grass and ran panic-stricken hither and hither. When he raised his foot, four large soldier ants, with menacing, shiny claws waving about, slowly emerged from the hole. They surveyed the surroundings. There was nothing wrong, just maybe some foolish kudu had temporarily interfered. They consulted with the panic-stricken workers, threw about their weight a little, then walked majestically back and disappeared into the hole. The rhythm of work replaced itself, but this time with a speeded-up tempo. The rain was near.

The wife called the children home. They had eaten a while ago and now, with the first isolated drops of rain, they came tumbling and shouting and tussling into the yard, and scattered to their separate sleeping huts.

The man felt tired and content. When he entered their sleeping hut, the bed of jackal blankets was neatly prepared. There was an oil lamp, made from a Milo tin, burning in one corner. There was the thunder and rain outside. There was this hut, and his wife’s quiet, warm female body which was very satisfying.