“We love the sea,” Tess said. “Give us four days and we make straight for Durban. Durban isn’t nice, but it has the sea to put your feet in.”
“You’ll be singing a different tune about Hartogs when your day comes,” Gareth said over his shoulder.
Tess said, “Nowadays whenever I am on paved road I never take it for granted. Even in U.K. I enjoy it, just the being on it. Even here, when you get to the paved roads, bad as they are, I just say thank God to myself. I hate these spoors. And why do they call these tire ruts spoors, does anyone know?”
Tom said, “We put in the roads and they don’t maintain them, do they? They think a road is a thing like your fingernail — chip it and it grows back. Well, they’re wrong, aren’t they?”
Gareth slowed. They were approaching a narrow concrete-slab bridge over a gully. There was no more than a yard of clearance on either side of the vehicle. The stream-bed beneath the slab was baked sand pocked with hoofmarks. They crossed safely. The bushes beside the road were plated with red dust.
They passed a small settlement and the men began to laugh. An imposing thorn tree overhanging a shed at the roadside was clotted with paper refuse — streamers of toilet tissue caught in the spines.
Nan said, “It’s unfair. We bring in all these metal and plastic things and bottles that don’t decay. In the old times, they could leave anything about and it was organic — it would decay or be eaten. Even as it is, the goats eat a lot of the plastic. Look at the courtyards, Tess. They are as neat as you like. They sweep them morning and evening.”
“Yes, everything goes into the lane,” Gareth said.
“They aren’t wasteful,” Nan said, in a voice made light. “Every bit of rag they can get they make something with. They make shifts out of maize sacks. They will ask you for your rags and they are so grateful—”
“Hallo! Nan, don’t look on the right! Dead beast.” Gareth was peremptory.
Nan did as she was told. The men looked. On the bank was the corpse of a heifer, fresh. Dogs or jackals had been at work. There was movement in the brush adjacent.
“Third one this trip,” Tom said. “This drought is red hell.”
Gareth nodded. He related something that Hartogs, who was a great hunter, had told him. Animals were being driven mad with thirst and were fighting over carrion. There was some zoological protocol between vultures and jackals that was breaking down. The jackals were supposed to withdraw when the birds came, but lately they were staying and fighting. Hartogs had witnessed a magnificent fight. Gareth described it until Nan asked him to stop.
Nan said to Tess, but projecting for the benefit of the front, “Truly, are we so superior as we think? I wonder a little. When we first moved in at the mine, we did something at the house so stupid I am still in pain. There were two pawpaw trees growing side by side by the house, one thriving with nice big pawpaws on it and the other sick-looking and leafless — dead-looking. Well, we thought it was plain what we should do: take down the dead tree. So we hauled and pushed on the trunk of the poor tree and strained and pulled it over — uprooted it, Gareth and myself. It was his idea: we must just straight off do this, get it over. Then, with the crash, the servants come out. They had funny looks on. Dineo said, so quietly, ‘Oh, Mma, you have killed the male.’ We didn’t understand. It seems the pawpaw grow in pairs, couples, male and female. The male tree looks like a phallus — no foliage to it, really. The female needs the male in order to bear. They take years to reach the height ours had. Then the female died. The staff had been eating pawpaws from our tree for years. It was a humiliation.”
“Bit ancient times by now, isn’t it?” Gareth said angrily.
“So sorry,” Nan said.
They saw a woman standing at the edge of a strip of cultivated land, a mealie patch. A baby was bound to her back with a blanket.
Nan resumed, in the same projecting voice, “And these blankets, let me just mention. These blankets they tie their children to them with. One sees the babies in the hot season and they are sweating and drenched. And I know from the sisters that quite a lot of them get pneumonia and die of it, when they shouldn’t. Why, do you think? I say because of acrylics. That’s all they can get nowadays. The acrylics don’t breathe. Of course, in the old times they used skins, or if they bought blankets they were wool. But we bring them marvelous cheap acrylics, make them very cheap and drive out the wool, and their children are perishing. Try to buy a wool blanket today at any price in this part of the world.”
Gareth half faced the back. “Might I ask where you have the least proof of that? You don’t know a bloody thing about it. We can’t set a foot right if we’re white, can we? Regular litany with you, Nan. You’re becoming tiresome!”
“Could you possibly just carry on driving and not overturning? Let the women talk, Gareth. No, I have no proof, sorry. Now watch him start racing.”
Tom and Gareth began talking about crime. They agreed that the situation was getting out of hand.
Tom said, “You know, they have some of those road-contract chaps billeted in the Shangule Hotel to this day, the housing they promised is still not ready. Well, I talked to one of them. Well, you know how the hotel is, just by the railroad station. Train comes in twelve at night and stops for five minutes. So what happens? Every night at twelve—pum pum pum, you have these villains bounding down the hallways, footsteps, rattling door handles one after another just to see if they’re unlocked, by chance. Then comes a shout that the train is going, and pum pum pum, everybody pelts back and all aboard. Every night of the week without fail — set your watch to it. Life in the metropolis of Shangule.”
Tess began complaining to Nan about stealing. “The stealing is getting terrible, really.”
“I know they steal,” Nan said. “I think I should steal, too, in their place. No, I mean this, Tess. I heard a story. Two American Peace Corps women staying in a rondavel in Serowe. Middle of the night. They hear sounds. They’re locked in tight, all right, but they hear someone fooling at the door and windows. ‘Go away!’ they say. ‘Who is it?’ There is silence, and then a voice says, ‘We are thieves, let us in.’ That somehow is so typical. I don’t think they are really cruel. Wait.” She edged forward, signaling Tess to say nothing. She sat back.
“Gareth is still on about crime. It’s coming up a sermon — how criminal, how worthless the Batswana are. How slow they are. ‘They move like clouds,’ he likes to say. They are so insanitary and so forth and so on ad nauseam world without end. It wears me right out. Not that I wasn’t that way. I was worse, at first. I was just a maniac when food fell on the floor and one of the children picked it up to eat, because the help are barefoot — What is it?”
Tess was pressing a palm to her middle and frowning. She put a finger to her lips and slid closer to Nan. In a low voice, she said, “I’m ovulating. I get a stitch over here when it starts. Or on the other side.”
“You mean without fail? So you always know where you are?”
“All my life.”
“Aren’t you lucky!” Nan said. Her eyes reddened, and she turned to look out the window on her side.
They had been passing through a long stretch of burned-over land. The bleakness oppressed them. The women began estimating how far it was to Lobatse, their destination. Tom corrected them. “Ladies, you are too low by half. It’s three hours from here to the pavement, with the worst driving yet to come — the deep sand near Pala, the Trench. Then on the bitumen it’s an hour and a half to Lobatse, the Cumberland Hotel, a lager, fillet chasseur, a bathe, and good night all and thank you very much.”