The Sun Between Their Feet: Collected African Stories Volume Two. Doris Lessing
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do? Now, repeating what he had said then, the farmer spoke from the kitchen steps, holding the lamp high in one hand above his shoulder as he turned to go in, so that it sent beams of light swinging across the bush: ‘I don’t want to hear anything about your wife, Jonas. You should look after her yourself. And if you are not too old to take a young wife, then you aren’t too old to shoot. You will take the gun as usual this year. Good night.’ And he went inside, leaving the garden black and pathless. Jonas stood quite still, waiting for his eyes to accustom themselves to the dark; then he started off down the path, finding his way by the feel of the loose stones under his feet.
He had not yet eaten, but when he came to within sight of the compound, he felt he could not go farther. He halted, looking at the little huts silhouetted black against cooking fires that sent up great drifting clouds of illuminated smoke. There was his hut, he could see it, a small conical shape. There his wives were, waiting with his food prepared and ready.
But he did not want to eat. He felt he could not bear to go in and face his old wife, who mocked him with her tongue, and his young wife, who answered him submissively but mocked him with her actions. He was sick and tormented, cut off from his friends who were preparing for an evening by the fires, because he could see the knowledge of his betrayal in their eyes. The cold pain of jealousy that had been gnawing at him for so long, felt now like an old wound, aching as an old wound aches before the rains set in.
He did not want to go into the fields, either to perch until he was stiff in one of the little cabins on high stilts that were built at the corners of each land as shooting platforms, or to walk in the dark through the hostile bush. But that night, without going for his food, he set off as usual on his long vigil.
The next night, however, he did not go; nor the next, nor the nights following. He lay all day dozing in the sun on his blanket, turning himself over and over in the sun, as if its rays could cauterize the ache from his heart. When evening came, he ate his meal early before going off with the gun. And then he stood with his back to a tree, within sight of the compound; indeed, within a stone’s throw of his own hut, for hours, watching silently. He felt numb and heavy. He was there without purpose. It was as if his legs had refused an order to march away from the place. All that week the lands lay unguarded, and if the wild animals were raiding the young plants, he did not care. He seemed to exist only in order to stand at night watching his hut. He did not allow himself to think of what was happening inside. He merely watched; until the fires burned down, and the bush grew cold and he was so stiff that when he went home, at sunrise, he had the appearance of one exhausted after a night’s walking.
The following Saturday there was a beer drink. He could have got leave to attend it, had he wanted; but at sundown he took himself off as usual and saw that his wife was pleased when he left.
As he leaned his back to the tree trunk that gave him its support each night, and held the rifle lengthwise to his chest, he fixed his eyes steadily on the dark shape that was his hut, and remembered that look on his young wife’s face. He allowed himself to think steadily of it, and of many similar things. He remembered the young man, as he had seen him only a few days before, bending over the girl as she knelt to grind meal, laughing with her; then the way they both looked up, startled, at his approach, their faces growing blank.
He could feel his muscles tautening against the rifle as he pictured that scene, so that he set it down on the ground, for relief, letting his arms fall. But in spite of the pain, he continued to think; for tonight things were changed in him, and he no longer felt numb and purposeless. He stood erect and vigilant, letting the long cold barrel slide between his fingers, the hardness of the tree at his back like a second spine. And as he thought of the young man another picture crept into his mind again and again, that of a young waterhuck he had shot last year, lying soft at his feet, its tongue slipping out into the dust as he picked it up, so newly dead that he imagined he felt the blood still pulsing under the warm skin. And from the small wet place under its neck a few sticky drops rolled over glistening fur. Suddenly, as he stood there thinking of the blood, and the limp body of the buck, and the young man laughing with his wife, his mind grew clear and cool and the oppression on him lifted.
He sighed deeply, and picked up the rifle again, holding it close, like a friend, against him, while he gazed in through the trees at the compound.
It was early, and the flush from sunset had not yet quite gone from the sky, although where he stood among the undergrowth it was night. In the clear spaces between the huts groups of figures took shape, talking and laughing and getting ready for the dance. Small cooking fires were being lit; and a big central fire blazed, sending up showers of sparks into the clouds of smoke. The tom-toms were beating softly; soon the dance would begin. Visitors were coming in through the bush from the other compounds miles away: it would be a long wait.
Three times he heard steps along the path close to him before he drew back and turned his head to watch the young man pass, as he had passed every night that week, with a jaunty eager tread and eyes directed towards Jonas’s hut. Jonas stood as quiet as a tree struck by lightning, holding his breath, although he could not be seen, because the thick shadows from the trees were black around him. He watched the young man thread his way through the huts into the circle of firelight, and pass cautiously to one side of the groups of waiting people, like someone uncertain of his welcome, before going in through the door of his own hut.
Hours passed, and he watched the leaping dancing people, and listened to the drums as the stars swung over his head and the night birds talked in the bush around him. He thought steadily now, as he had not previously allowed himself to think, of what was happening inside the small dark hut that gradually became invisible as the fires died and the dancers went to their blankets. When the moon was small and high and cold behind his back, and the trees threw sharp black windows on the path, and he could smell morning on the wind, he saw the young man coming towards him again. Now Jonas shifted his feet a little, to ease the stiffness out of them, and moved the rifle along his arm, feeling for the curve of the trigger on his finger.
As the young man lurched past, for he was tired, and moved carelessly, Jonas slipped out into the smooth dusty path a few paces behind, shrinking back as the released branches swung wet into his face and scattered large drops of dew on to his legs. It was cold; his breath misted into a thin pearly steam dissolving into the moonlight.
He was so close to the man in front that he could have touched him with the raised rifle; had he turned there would have been no concealment; but Jonas walked confidently, though carefully, and thought all the time of how he had shot down from ten paces away that swift young buck as it started with a crash out of a bush into a cold moony field.
When they reached the edge of the land where acres of mealies sloped away, dimly green under a dome of stars, Jonas began to walk like a cat. He wanted now to be sure; and he was only fifty yards from the shooting platform in the corner of the field, that looked in this light like a crazy fowl-house on stilts. The young man was staggering with tiredness and drink, making a crashing noise at each step as he snapped the sap-full mealies under heavy feet.
But the buck had shot like a spear from the bush, had caught the lead in its chest as it leaped, had fallen as a spear curves to earth; it had not blundered and lurched and swayed. Jonas began to feel a disgust for this man, and the admiration and fascination he felt for his young rival vanished. The tall slim youth who had laughed down at his wife had nothing to do with the ungainly figure crashing along before him, making so much noise that there could be no game left unstartled for miles.
When they reached the shooting platform, Jonas stopped dead, and let the youth move on. He lifted the rifle to his cheek and saw the long barrel slant against the stars, which sent a glint of light back down the steel. He waited, quite still, watching the man’s back sway above the mealies. Then, at the right moment, he squeezed his finger close, holding the rifle steady to fire again.
As the sound of the shot reverberated, the round dark head jerked oddly, blotting out fields of stars; the body seemed to crouch, one hand went out as if he were going to lean sideways to the ground. Then he disappeared into the mealies with a startled thick cry. Jonas lowered the rifle and listened. There was a threshing noise, a horrible grunting, and half-words muttered, like someone talking in sleep.
Jonas