Read Online African Laughter by Doris Lessing - Free Book Online Page B

where she puts her muzzle into the hand of the mistress of the house, and whines, begging for love. The woman, who understands the dog’s unhappiness, sits down on the verandah or on the lawn beside Sheba and hugs her and sweet-talks, until Sheba licks her face, and trots back home. Sheba is overshadowed by the big dog Sparta, a strong intelligent dog who, when we play with them in the garden, always reaches the thrown stick first, and can pick up in his mouth two, three, four sticks, tossing them and catching them for our applause, like a juggler. Sheba can carry only one stick. Sparta knows how to obey orders, Sit, To heel, Lie down, Fetch it, Bark once–twice–three times. My brother trained Sparta, but Sheba was not trained. She is frantic to be like Sparta, is always watching, to find out how it is done, while Sparta shows off.
    My brother seemed helpless with Sheba, did not know how to gentle the dog’s pain, which is so like his. But later, when Sheba found that no woman came to live in the house, she attached herself to my brother, and bested Sparta in the way of affection, for he could not compete with her need to be one person’s dog, with her fierce devotion. She slept on my brother’s bed, was always beside him, her head near his hand, or lay with her eyes on his face. When my brother Took the Gap, the dogs went with him. Quite soon Sheba got herself coiled in some wire left loose at the end of a fence. She strangled to death, though there was a man present, with wirecutters in his pocket, the white stock manager of a local ranch. He said he wasn’t going to risk being bitten by an Alsatian.
    Later a neighbour telephoned to say he had driven into Marondera for the mail, and could not buy a newspaper: they had all been sold. There had been an ‘incident’ on the Victoria Falls road from Bulawayo. Terrorists had captured tourists. ‘Of course they aren’t going to tell us the truth in our papers,’ said the neighbour. ‘Ask your sister to ring London.’ I did this and found that the Terrorists, supposed to be Joshua Nkomo’s men, had captured six tourists, but released three women. The men would be killed if Mugabe did not release some Nkomo men in prison.
    ‘There you are,’ says Harry, ‘you have to telephone Home to get the facts.’
    Which were all on the television news.
    ‘There you are,’ I said.
    But he went off into The Monologue. By then I had understood the whites were in a state of shock, just as if there had been an accident, or a disaster. I was irritated with myself for not seeing earlier what could have been foreseen before even leaving London.
    After supper we argued: of course I should have known better. He got a bit tight and talked about the innate inferiority of the blacks. I was to discover this happens often with whites when they get drunk. Not all of them, though; and it is interesting to try and guess which old Rhodie will start spouting racialism when they have had a drink or two, for they might just as well reveal admiration of a wistful Rousseau-like kind: ‘They are much better people than we are, you know.’ But some whites define themselves by insisting on the inferiority of the blacks. What deep insecurity, what inadequacy, does this insistence on other people’s inferiority conceal? (In 1991 I sat in a London restaurant with black Zimbabweans who talked to Indian waiters with the same cold insulting dislike once used by the worst of the whites to the blacks.) I said he talked as if the whites of Southern Rhodesia were all remarkable and valuable, but many were poor material from any point of view. When they were good they were very very good, skilful, adaptable, full of expertise, but the rest were limited, unintelligent, with that kind of complacency that can only go with stupidity. They would not easily get jobs anywhere else and the blacks were only too lucky to have got rid of them. Harry was hurt. He was bitter, accusing; could not believe I had said these