— What about the Dutchman at the other farm? The brother of the one who came yesterday. He can try there. —
They were resting; they had been feeding the dry and stripped mealie plants into a machine that chopped up the stuff for cattle fodder; tissue-thin fragments of leaf, millimetre strips of bamboo-smooth stalk, flecks of pith like spit, clung lightly to them in a dust complex as snow-flakes. Their old hats protected the heads of three, but the bare wool of the fourth, whose possibilities of finding a job were in question, was linted with it.
— That’s no good. -
— He went there. —
The first bit of brown paper with its pile of tobacco was rolled, licked, handed out. — He’d better try town. —
It was not necessary to remind Jacobus that a farm labourer has no papers for town. He must have something in mind.
— They’re short at the abattoir. —
— Who told you that? —
— Alina’s daughter’s husband said. —
The man was given a smoke, too. He had not worked with them the whole morning but had come to look for them, down from the compound, falling into the rhythm of their work, an hour or two ago.
Someone made a loud tongue-click, followed by a sharp, grunted squeak of scepticism, and another click.
— That’s the municipality, isn’t it? They’re going to take someone without a town pass? I’ve never heard of it. The municipality? —
— We can all go to earn money in town then! —
— Yes — Jacobus offers for what it’s worth, his voice rising slightly — You can ask the daughter’s husband, he’ll tell you. They are short. They’ll take you on. That’s what he said once. —
A figure went by on a bicycle, pumping regularly from left leg to right, singing without words as a man does when the wind of his own passage, in his ears, makes him confident that because he can scarcely hear himself, no one else can, either. One of them called teasingly after him; he had not noticed them under the open shelter of the barn.
— I can go and ask on the telephone. — For Jacobus, if not for them, it was simple as that.
— Who will you ask on the telephone? —
The young man had propped his bicycle near by, and joined them, without interruption, respectful of a conversation he could not at once expect to follow. He was wearing his black and white checked cap, green bell-bottoms, shoes and socks, yellow orlon-knit shirt; the day-off clothes set him apart like a bridegroom among his familiars.
— Come on. I can go up to the house now and phone William at the India’s. William can come to the phone. They’ll call him. He can ask Alina’s daughter. — Jacobus reeled off answers to all their doubts and objections before they could formulate them.
Still they hesitated. He laughed. They knew that he had the keys of the house, that he could go in and out when he liked. Perhaps it was true that he could even phone the Indian shop and ask to speak to one of the men who worked there. Perhaps the Indian would agree to let him come to the phone.
— Let’s go. I’m going to the house. - It didn’t matter to him whether they accompanied him or not.
While they walked past the stall where the bull was ruminating and the shed where the spike-tooth cultivator and other combinations of steel teeth and blades lay half-disassembled (Jacobus stepped aside to push some vulnerable part nearer its fellow components) someone said — Why didn’t those people say anything about it when he was staying there with them? —
This time the man answered for himself. — They didn’t tell me. I don’t know. —
— I only say, I remember what Alina’s daughter’s man said to me. Perhaps it’s too late. We can find out, eh, we can ask. On the telephone. -
He went into the open garage and took the kitchen door key from his hiding-place up with the bundles of onions that he was drying from the rafters. The house stank of cat’s pee. They trooped into the living-room behind him, walking softly, with slightly bent knees. The elderly Rhodesian, Witbooi, took off his hat. They stood while Jacobus’s finger went down numbers written on the margin of a calendar with a picture of a white woman without clothes. He turned the crank of the telephone, picked up the receiver, all the time keeping the forefinger of his other hand on the number, and then, after a hesitant beginning, repeated the first digit and spelled out all four to the operator. He did not look at them while waiting for the call to be connected. The Sunday paper was lying on the floor of the room. There were empty bottles beside the chairs. The ashtrays were full.
Speaking English, which not all of them could do, not only his words were different now. He stuttered, he kept lifting one foot and putting it down again, he was crouched round the hand in which he held the receiver. - Please. please I want speak William. William. The boy, there. Ye-es. Ye-es. William. No, no, I’m his brother want speak with him. -
Another silence. The youngster, Izak, picked up a beer bottle, tipped it, put it down. Now Jacobus began to talk again, fast, loud, in the language they all spoke, and they all listened. They could tell from what he was saying what the man at the other end had said: it was true that sometimes the abattoir took people without papers to work in town. Jacobus was bellowing down the machine and the other voice was bellowing back. — You mean he can go there with Dorcas’s husband any day? But what do you mean then? Not now? But why did you say — oh yes, all right, if you’re not sure. He comes home when — six o‘clock? Seven o’clock. All right. All right, boetie —
Jacobus put the phone back firmly and carefully, rang off by turning the crank, presented the accomplishment of the piece of business to them. - He’ll find out when that one comes home. -
Izak had lifted the lid of the piano; smiling at them to look at him, his hand was above the keys as if he were about to capture a butterfly.
Jacobus gave a jerk of the head to indicate the lid must be closed. As they all went out he paused, in this room, and collected from the ashtrays a half-smoked cigarette and the butts of several cigars. The butts were all smoked down to precisely the same length — like the ones the children knew they must deliver to him whenever they found them in the grass.
Rusty scales of long-dried blood gilded the gum-boots. Izak, who was sent over to buy beer at the shanty town behind De Beer’s farm, recognized the blood-coated boots before he separated the faces of the men in the drinking-place, a one-roomed house with a roof held down by rocks and pumpkins. Izak had a milk-can with a lid secured by a chain, for the beer; it jingled its early-morning sound as the two men cycled back together in the half-dark.
— That husband of Dorcas came past with Izak. - Jacobus’s wife brought him a mug of tea.
Jacobus coaxed the last of the pap round his flowered plate, with his fingertips, and made it into a final mouthful. - You can see in the dark. -
She put sugar in the tea.
— Where’d Izak find him? —
— How do I know. Eight o‘clock, nine o’clock — when they work in town they come when they like. They go where they like. - She and Alina spent a lot of time together complaining about their children and their children’s husbands and wives.
Jacobus passed the paddock where the calves were lying down for the night. One or two staggered to their feet and he murmured something soothing. From here he could see the light of the braziers at the compound, reddening the walls of the breeze-block.