196
DORIS LESSIN'
covered with flies and sweating, and it was as hot as hell, which
is
what Blagspruit is, hell. And he'd been there ten years, man, ten
years...
Right.
It
is Esther's afternoon off, and Johannes says he
will
make us some tea, but I see he is quite lost without her, so I
say,
give me a glass of water, and let's get out from under this iron,
that's all I ask. He looks surprised, because his hide is hardened
to
it, but off we go, through the dusty little garden full of marigolds and
zinnias, you know those sun-baked gardens with the barbed
wire
fences and the gates painted dried-blood color in those little
do~
stuck in the middle of the veld, enough to make you get drunk even
to think of them, but Johannes is sniffing at the marigolds, which
stink like turps, and he sticks an orange zinnia in his lapel, and
says:
"Esther likes gardening." And there we go along the main
stree~
saying good afternoon to the citizens, for half a mile, then we're out
in the veld again, just the veld. And we wander about, kicking up
the dust and watching the sun sink, because both of us have
just
one idea, which is: how soon can we decently start sundowning?
Then there was a nasty stink on the air, and it came from a
small bird impaled on a thorn on a thorn-tree which was a butcher–
bird's cache, have you ever seen one? Every blerry thorn had a beetle
or a worm or something stuck on it, and it made me feel pretty
sick, coming on top of everything, and I was just picking up a stone
to throw at the damned thorn tree, to spite the butcher bird, when
I saw Hans staring at a lower part of this tree. On a long black
thorn was a great big brown beetle, and it was waving all its
six
legs and its two feelers in rhythm, trying to claw the thorn out of its
middle, or so it looked, and it was writhing and wriggling, so that
at last it fell off the thorn, which was at right angles, so to speak,
from the soil, and
it
landed on its back, still waving its legs, trying
to up itself. At which Hans bent down to look at it for some time,
his two monk's hands on his upper thighs, his bald head sweating
and glowing red in the last sunlight.
Then he bent down, picked
up
the beetle and stuck it back on the thorn.
Carefully, you understand,
so that the thorn went back into the hole it had already made, you
could see he was trying not to hurt the beetle. I just stood and gaped,
like a
domkop,
and I remembered how one used to feel when he
leaned forward and said, all earnest and involved: "You say the
