In Pursuit of the English. Doris Lessing
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just caught.
‘Ya,’ he said, looking at me severely, ‘you must get the management to cook it for you. I can tell you, you need feeding up. I can see it. The English can’t cook. They can’t eat. You look very bad.’
‘The management,’ I said, ‘is Afrikaans.’
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I will go and make enquiries.’ I heard him stride over the bare boards of the passage. A silence. He came back, still swinging the fish by a loop of string through his forefinger. ‘I can’t give her this fish,’ he said. ‘She would not cook it as it should be cooked. And what are you doing here? This place is going to be pulled down, and instead we shall have a fine modern hotel with all conveniences for the tourists.’ He laid the fish on the floor. The room was pervaded with a loud smell of salt, sea and fish. It was an extremely hot afternoon.
‘Piet, I wish you’d take that fish away. People are very sensitive in this place. You’d be surprised.’
He nodded, with solemnity. ‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘It’s that English colony you’ve been living in. It makes people suspicious and conventional. In a minute you will be telling me not to speak so loudly.’
Piet did not look himself at all. Or rather, he was wearing his smug look, which went with his public personality. He was a tall man, rangy, with a high bounding stride. He had a long, pale portentous face. He wore his hair rather long. He also wore, for the benefit of his trade, flapping and colourful clothes. He had the ability to appear, by slightly tightening the muscles of his face, like a pale and enduring Christ. This is not at all what his character was. In fact I have never known a man who enjoyed himself more wholeheartedly than he did. He had a smile that spread, wicked and sly, from cheekbone to cheekbone, and eyes that crinkled amusement. Not, however, at the moment.
‘You have come at a bad time,’ he said. ‘I’m not happy. I have realized that in three months I shall be forty. I have only ten years to live. I have always known that I shall die at fifty. It is a terrible thing to understand suddenly – death is approaching in great silent strides.’ He smiled, slightly, sideways, his eyes narrowed, as it were listening to the footsteps of death. ‘Ya,’ he said. ‘Ya. Ten years. So much to do, so little done.’ With a great effort he prevented himself from laughing, and sighed deeply instead.
Piet is not the only man I’ve known who has sentenced himself to death in advance. I know a doctor, for instance, a man of the highest intelligence moreover, who decided when he was thirty-six that he had ten years to live, and planned his life accordingly. It seems the Medical Association, or some such body, had announced that the average age for doctors to die was at forty-six, and from coronary thrombosis. Meeting this man after an interval, I pointed out that he now had only five years to live, and I trusted he was making good use of his time. But the BMA had meanwhile raised the statistical life of a doctor by ten years, and so things were not so urgent after all.
‘But there will be a silver lining to my personal tragedy,’ said Piet. ‘When my death is announced in the Press, for the first time in her history South Africa will be united.’
‘How is that?’
‘Surely you can imagine for yourself? Ya, think of it. Think of that morning. It will be very hot. The pigeons will be cooing in the trees. Then the news will come. The pigeons will stop cooing. In every town, in every village, in every little dorp, there will be a silence like the end of the world. Then there will rise into the still air a single cry of agony. Then from every house will come wailing and weeping. From every house will rush weeping women, old women, young women, wives, mothers, the Mayor’s daughter and the wife of the linesman. They will look at each other. By their tears they will know each other as sisters. They will run into each other’s arms. English and Afrikaans, Jewish and Greek, they will weep and cry: Piet is dead. Our Piet is dead.’
‘And the men?’
‘Ya, the men. Well, they will be united by the inconsolable grief of the women.’ He sighed again. ‘I have been thinking of that day all the way back in my car. I have had a terrible trip this time, because of my new understanding of my approaching death. But I have made a lot of money this time. I have been painting pondokkies all over the Free State. Thank God, now I can pay my debts.’
Piet was a man of talent. He had even painted in Paris and London. But he had been unable to make a living in the Cape. Therefore, whenever short of money, he drove off into the interior, his clothing subdued and his expression mournful. He introduced himself to the Mayor or some bigwig in each city, as a sound son of the Afrikaans nation, and explained that it was a terrible thing that this great people should be so uncultured as not to support its talented child. He painted them, their houses, their children, and their wives. He also painted points of local interest, which, as he explained, always turned out to consist of pondokkies. In other words, African huts, slums, broken-down villages, shabby sheds and picturesque houses.
‘And why do you come on holiday to Cape Town when I am not even here? My poor child, with no one to look after you. But as it happens now I must rush off, because I must take this beautiful fish home to my wife. I shall cook it myself. No woman can cook as well as I do. I caught it in a pool where I caught its brother last year. That is probably the most beautiful pool in the whole world. I’ll take you there tomorrow.’
‘I can’t. My son isn’t the right age for fishing.’
‘A child? Of course, I forgot. Where is he?’
I pointed out of the window.
‘A fine child.’ He almost groaned. ‘Ya, ya, and when I am dead he will be a fine young man, enjoying life, and I will be forgotten.’
‘No, not that one, that one.’
‘They are all fine children. And all of them, they will be fishing and – painting pondokkies when I am dead. But now you have this child you will be very dull and full of responsibility. Why is it, all women have children. Sometimes I think you do it to spite me.’
‘All the same. And besides, my morale is very low due to living in this Afrikaans boarding house. I am weak from malnutrition and haven’t the heart for fishing.’
‘And why do you put me and my nation at a disadvantage by taking a holiday in such a place?’
‘I am not on holiday. I am waiting for my boat to England.’
He groaned. ‘England. So that’s it. Ya, that’s it. Well, you’ll be sorry, I am telling you. And what will you do, in a country full of these Englishmen? They are no good for women. I know this. When I arrived in London all those poor women, they rushed out with their arms extended saying: “Piet, Piet, is that you? Thank God you’ve come at last.”’
‘We shall see,’ I said.
‘Ya, it is a terrible thing.’
‘It’s a fact that men of all nations are convinced that men of any other nation are no good for women. I’m sure a statistically significant number of women would be able to vouch for this.’
‘And listen to how you talk. You are bitter already. When I hear a woman use words like statistics, I know she is bitter. It is that English colony. It has very likely marked you for life. Ya. I shall come tomorrow and cheer you up. Now I shall take my fish. I have a very sensitive sense of smell, and I can tell it is time.’
With which he left, jerking the fish after him along the floor and saying: ‘Come, come, little fish, come with me, come and leap into the great black pot where you will die another death for me.’ Over his shoulder he said: ‘And I shall bring you a real picture I have painted, to show you that all these pondokkies have not ruined my talent.’
Mrs Barnes knocked. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I am afraid I really must ask you not to have fish in your room. This place is bad enough without fish as well.’
‘It was caught this morning,’ I said.
‘The whole building smells.’
‘I didn’t invite the fish.’