Дорис Лессинг - Саранча. Колдовство не продаётся Страница 4

И они продолжали раздраженно уговаривать повара, по Гидеон твердил, что не может вспомнить, что такого корня нет, что он не растет в это время года, что вовсе не корень, а его, Гидеона, слюна вылечила глаза Тедди. Он говорил всё Это подряд, явно не смущаясь тем, что одно противоречило другому. Он был груб и упрям. Фарквары не узнавали своего доброго, любящего старого слугу в этом невежественном, тупом и упрямом туземце, который стоял, опустив глаза и теребя фартук, и приводил всё новые отговорки, одну нелепее другой.

И вдруг Гидеон как будто сдался: подняв голову, он посмотрел долгим, полным злобы взглядом на группу белых людей, которые, казалось, окружили его, как свора собак, и набрасывались на него с громким лаем.

— Я покажу вам корень, — сказал он.

От фермы все гуськом пошли по тропе кафров. Стоял знойный декабрьский полдень, небо затягивалось дождевыми тучами. Всё было накалено. Солнце было похоже на медный поднос, вращающийся над головой, над полями колыхался горячий воздух, земля трескалась под ногами, горячий ветер с песком и пылью дул в лицо. Ужасный день! В такое время только лежать на веранде и потягивать коктейли.

Время от времени, вспоминая, что в тот день, когда с Тедди случилась беда, потребовалось всего несколько минут, чтобы найти корень, кто-нибудь спрашивал:

— Далеко еще, Гидеон?

И Гидеон, сдерживая злость, отвечал вежливо через плечо:

— Я ищу корень, баас.

И действительно, он часто наклонялся то в одну, то в другую сторону, раздвигал рукой траву и злил своих спутников небрежностью, с которой он это делал. Он водил их среди кустов, по неизвестным тропам добрых два часа под нестерпимо палящим солнцем. Они изнемогали, пот ручьями струился по телу, болела голова. Все молчали: Фарквары потому, что были злы, ученый потому, что еще раз убедился, что таинственного растения не существует. Он молчал из приличия.

Наконец в шести милях от дома Гидеон вдруг решил, что с них достаточно, а может быть, его гнев прошел. Мельком взглянув на траву, он сорвал пучок голубых цветов, которые повсюду попадались им на пути. Он протянул их ученому, не глядя на него, повернулся и пошел по направлению к дому, предоставив им следовать за ним, если они захотят.

Когда они вернулись домой, ученый пошел на кухню поблагодарить Гидеона: он был очень вежлив, несмотря на свой насмешливый взгляд. Но Гидеона там не было.

Небрежно бросив цветы на заднее сиденье своей машины, почтенный гость отбыл обратно в свою лабораторию.

Гидеон вернулся на кухню готовить обед, он был всё еще в мрачном настроении и разговаривал с миссис Фарквар тоном непокорного слуги. Прошло много времени, прежде чем вернулось их былое расположение друг к другу.

Фарквары расспрашивали своих работников о корне. Одни отвечали недоверчивыми взглядами, другие говорили:

— Мы не знаем, мы никогда не слышали об этом корне.

И только один из туземцев, пастух, который уже давно работал у Фаркваров и привык относиться к ним с доверием, сказал:

— Спросите своего повара. Он ведь врачеватель. Он сын знаменитого лекаря, который жил в этих местах. Нет такой болезни, которую он не мог бы вылечить. — И вежливо добавил: — Конечно, он не такой хороший доктор, как белые, но нас он лечит хорошо.

Через некоторое время, когда чувство взаимной обиды у Фаркваров и Гидеона прошло, они начали подшучивать:

— Гидеон, когда ты покажешь нам змеиный корень?

Он смеялся в ответ, качал головой и говорил, чуть смущенно:

— Но ведь я показал вам, миссус, разве вы забыли?

Прошло еще некоторое время. Тедди, уже школьник, приходил на кухню и говорил:

— Ты, старый плут! Помнишь, как ты обманул нас всех, заставил исходить столько миль по кустарникам, и всё зря? Мы зашли так далеко, что отцу пришлось нести меня на руках.

Гидеон громко смеялся, делая вид, что это смешно. Потом, вдруг выпрямившись, он вытирал свои старые глаза и с грустью смотрел на Тедди, который, ехидно усмехаясь, глядел на него с другого конца кухни.

— Золотая головка! Как ты вырос! Скоро ты станешь совсем взрослым, и у тебя будет своя ферма…

A Mild Attack of Locusts

The rains that year were good, they were coming nicely just as the crops needed them — or so Margaret gathered when the men said they were not too bad. She never had an opinion of her own on matters like the weather, because even to know about what seems a simple thing like the weather needs experience. Which Margaret had not got. The men were Richard her husband, and old Stephen, Richard's father, a farmer from way back, and these two might argue for hours whether the rains were ruinous, or just ordinarily exasperating. Margaret had been on the farm three years. She still did not understand how they did not go bankrupt altogether, when the men never had a good word for the weather, or the soil, or the Government. But she was getting to learn the language. Farmer's language. And they neither went bankrupt nor got very rich. They jogged along, doing comfortably.

Their crop was maize. Their farm was three thousand acres on the ridges that rise up towards the Zambesi escarpment, high, dry windswept country, cold and dusty in winter, but now, being the wet season, steamy with the heat rising in wet soft waves off miles of green foliage. Beautiful it was, with the sky blue and brilliant halls of air, and the bright green folds and hollows of country beneath, and the mountains lying sharp and bare twenty miles off across the river. The sky made her eyes ache, she was not used to it. One does not look so much at the sky in the city she came from. So that evening when Richard said: 'The Government is sending out warnings that locusts are expected, coming down from the breeding grounds up North, her instinct was to look about her at the trees. Insects — swarms of them — horrible! But Richard and the old man had raised their eyes and were looking up over the mountains. 'We haven't had locusts in seven years, they said. They go in cycles, locusts do. And then: There goes our crop for this season!

But they went on with the work of the farm just as usual, until one day they were coming up the road to the homestead for the midday break, when old Stephen stopped, raised his finger and pointed: 'Look, look, there they are!

Out ran Margaret to join them, looking at the hills. Out came the servants from the kitchen. They all stood and gazed. Over the rocky levels of the mountain was a streak of rust-coloured air. Locusts. There they came.

At once Richard shouted at the cook-boy. Old Stephen yelled at the house-boy. The cook-boy ran to beat the old ploughshare hanging from a tree-branch, which was used to summon the labourers at moments of crisis. The house-boy ran off to the store to collect tin cans, any old bit of metal. The farm was ringing with the clamour of the gong, and they could see the labourers come pouring out of the compound, pointing at the hills and shouting excitedly. Soon they had all come up to the house, and Richard and old Stephen were giving them orders — Hurry, hurry, hurry.

And off they ran again, the two white men with them, and in a few minutes Margaret could see the smoke of fires rising from all around the farm-lands. Piles of wood and grass had been prepared there. There were seven patches of bared soil, yellow and ox-blood colour, and pink, where the new mealies were just showing, making a film of bright green, and around each drifted up thick clouds of smoke. They were throwing wet leaves on to the fires now, to make it acrid and black. Margaret was watching the hills. Now there was a long low cloud advancing, rust-colour still, swelling forwards and out as she looked. The telephone was ringing. Neighbours — quick, quick, there come the locusts. Old Smith had had his crop eaten to the ground. Quick, get your fires started. For of course, while every farmer hoped the locusts would overlook his farm and go on to the next, it was only fair to warn each other, one must play fair. Everywhere, fifty miles over the countryside, the smoke was rising from myriads of fires, Margaret answered the telephone calls, and between stood watching the locusts. The air was darkening. A strange darkness, for the sun was blazing — it was like the darkness of a veld fire, when the air gets thick with smoke. The sunlight comes down distorted, a thick hot orange. Oppressive it was, too, with the heaviness of a storm. The locusts were coming fast. Now half the sky was darkened. Behind the reddish veils in front which were the advance guard of the swarm, the main swarm showed in dense black cloud, reaching almost to the sun itself.

Margaret was wondering what she could do to help. She did not know. Then up came old Stephen from the lands. 'We're finished! These beggars can eat every leaf and blade off the farm in half an hour! And it is only early afternoon — if we can make enough smoke, make enough noise till the sun goes down, they'll settle somewhere else perhaps… And then: 'Get the kettle going. If s thirsty work, this.

So Margaret went to the kitchen, and stoked up the fire, and boiled the water. Now, on the tin roof of the kitchen she could hear the thuds of falling locusts, or a scratching slither as one skidded down. Here were the first of them. From down on the lands came the beating and banging and clanging of a hundred petrol tins and bits of metal. Stephen impatiently waited while one petrol tin was filled with tea, hot, sweet and orange-coloured, and the other with water. In the meantime, he told Margaret about how twenty years back he was eaten out, made bankrupt by the locust armies. And then, still talking, he hoisted up the petrol cans, one in each hand, by the wood pieces set corner-wise each, and jogged off down to the road to the thirsty labourers. By now the locusts were falling like hail on to the roof of the kitchen. It sounded like a heavy storm. Margaret looked out and saw the air dark with a criss-cross of the insects, and she set her teeth and ran out into it — what men could do, she could. Overhead the air was thick, locusts everywhere. The locusts were flopping against her, and she brushed them off, heavy red-brown creatures, looking at her with their beady old-men's eyes while they clung with hard serrated legs. She held her breath with disgust and ran into the house. There it was even more like being in a heavy storm. The iron roof was reverberating, and the clamour of iron from the lands was like thunder. Looking out, all the trees were queer and still, clotted with insects, their boughs weighed to the ground. The earth seemed to be moving, locusts crawling everywhere, she could not see the lands at all, so thick was the swarm. Towards the mountains it was like looking into driving rain — even as she watched, the sun was blotted out with a fresh onrush of them. It was a half-night, a perverted blackness. Then came a sharp crack from the bush — a branch had snapped off. Then another. A tree down the slope leaned over and settled heavily to the ground. Through the hail of insects a man came running. More tea, more water was needed. She supplied them. She kept the fires stoked and filled tins with liquid, and then it was four in the afternoon, and the locusts had been pouring across overhead for a couple of hours. Up came old Stephen again, crunching locusts underfoot with every step, locusts clinging all over him, cursing and swearing, banging with his old hat at the air. At the doorway he stopped briefly, hastily pulling at the clinging insects and throwing them off, then he plunged into the locust-free living-room.

'All the crops finished. Nothing left, he said.

But the gongs were still beating, the men still shouting, and Margaret asked: 'Why do you go on with it, then?

'The main swarm isn't settling. They are heavy with eggs. They are looking for a place to settle and lay. If we can stop the main body settling on our farm, that's everything. If they get a chance to lay their eggs, we are going to have everything eaten flat with hoppers later on. He picked a stray locust off his shirt, and split it down his thumbnail — it was clotted inside with eggs. 'Imagine that multiplied by millions. You ever see a hopper swarm on the march? Well, you're lucky.

Margaret thought an adult swarm was bad enough. Outside now the light on the earth was a pale thin yellow, clotted with moving shadow, the clouds of moving insects thickened and lightened like driving rain. Old Stephen said: 'They've got the wind behind them, that's something.