Read Online A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto - Free Book Online

and the bag breaks apart under the ripping teeth, spilling the contents into the dust. A blouse is shredded, and a brassiere. One dog grasps a shoe in its jaws and lopes swiftly away. The other returns to the body and noses it, then makes a quick cringing nip at an area of exposed flesh. But some noise disturbs the dog and it snarls from the side of its mouth before slinking off after its companion.
    A bicycle approaches at a leisurely pace. A man named Griffiths Mthali is cycling to his job in Klipspring, and he sees the ripped valise on the road and the torn clothes, and he stops his bicycle and stares at these objects. He turns his head and surveys the veldt, the trees, the bushes. Then he dismounts and bends to study the objects in the dust, but does not touch them. He walks to the side of the road and looks down into the ditch and sees the body lying there. He touches the woman’s face, which feels cold under his fingers, and he sees the dried blood on her lips and nostrils. With a cry of alarm he runs back to his bicycle and pedals furiously towards the town.
    The duty constable at the police station in Klipspring drives out in hisvan to rediscover the body and examine it. He suspects murder. In the absence of any witnesses and any further evidence, he handcuffs Griffiths Mthali in the back of the van and radios to his sergeant for instructions. The sergeant drives out in another van, the corpse is inspected further, then the body is loaded into the back of the second van and taken into Klipspring. The doctor arrives later to examine the body. Griffiths Mthali is questioned, threatened, and left in his cell for some hours. At last a tentative conclusion of accidental death is reached. Pending further investigation, Mthali is released from his cell, with the advice not to leave the district.
    A telephone call is made to Mr. Ben Laurens, employer of the domestic servant named Grace Mkize. Death is announced.
    The two young men who celebrated that night as they drove along the dark roads, who thought themselves lucky to have returned safely from the war without killing, who now sleep off their celebration into the late hours of the day, will never hear of the death of a domestic servant on an outlying road. The death of Grace Mkize will not be remarked upon in the privileged world of these young white farmers as they go about their ordered lives.

10
    F IRST HE MUST plant the seeds.
    Ben Laurens tips his hat back on the crown of his head and crouches and lifts a handful of freshly dug soil in his fingers, lets it rest in his palm, then trickles it back onto the earth. The men have gone back to the kraal for their midday meal and he is alone now. Shortly he too will return to his house for lunch. But in this moment, before he goes up to the house to join Märit, he wants to be alone and savor the realization of his dreams.
    One day there will be a row of almond trees growing along this fence, this newly erected fence where the wire is taut and shiny and the posts are still clean and unweathered. One day he will walk in this very spot with his wife and their children and there will be the scent of almond blossoms in the air to greet them.
    In Ben’s shirt pocket is a small glass jar with a screw top, and inside the jar is a handful of soil—reddish, loamy, rich.
    When he first came to this country he would often drive up to the border country and meander along the back roads, studying the farms he passed. One day he stopped the car and got out to smell the air, and as he inhaled the aroma of the veldt, the sweet grass, the sun-warmed soil, he had the sudden feeling that he had come home. Taking the empty bag which had contained his sandwiches, he walked a few yards from the road and scooped a handful of the rich soil into the bag. When he returned to his small apartment in Hillbrow, he poured the soil into a glass jar and set it on the mantelpiece. In that jar was the soil of Kudufontein, the beginning of his garden, of