A Blade of Grass (25 page)

A solid mass of insects pours down the chimney and the sheer weight of their numbers extinguishes the flames.

Märit scurries on her hands and knees for the cushions from the couch, which she stuffs into the fireplace. But it is not enough. Insects stream down. In a near panic, she bundles up the rug and forces it into the opening, but wherever there is a gap, locusts struggle through. Märit grabs sheets of newspaper from the box next to the hearth and pushes the crumpled pages into all the gaps until at last the fireplace is sealed.

Inside the room locusts buzz frantically from wall to wall. The windows are crawling with insects, blocking the light; the room is dark as twilight. There are locusts on her arms and legs, on her head, on her face. The smell of decay chokes her.

Märit cowers under the weight of the locusts. She feels the weight of the swarm pressing on the windows, pressing on the doors, pressing on the roof. In a moment they will force the roof beams to sag, will force the doors to buckle, will shatter the glass in the windows. In a moment the swarm will suffocate her. Already she can hear the groaning of their weight upon the house, the thudding against the front door.

The banging at the door is loud in her ears, rapid, insistent. Märit cowers in a corner. She hears a thin, high sound. Her name.

Tembi! Oh God, Tembi! Tembi is still out there!

Märit shakes herself free of her panic and springs towards the door, rattling the bolt free. Tembi stumbles into the room, a rush of locusts entering around her before Märit has time to slam the door shut again.

Tembi beats wildly at her clothes, trying to shake free the insects that cling to her.

“They’re in here too,” Märit wails. “What should we do?”

“Into the bedroom! Quick.”

Because the windows are closed, the locusts have not managed to enter the bedroom and the women find shelter. They brush away the insects from their clothes and stamp them underfoot.

Exhausted, Märit slumps down on the corner of the bed and clutches her arms around her torso.

“What is happening?” she whispers, her eyes fixed upon the crawling
mass of insects on the other side of the window. “Will we ever be able to get out again?”

Tembi draws the curtain shut and flicks at the light switch, then remembers that the generator has failed. She finds matches on the bedside table and strikes one. The flare of the match is bright in the gloom. Lifting the lid of the paraffin lamp she holds the flame to the wick, but it will not catch.

“There’s no paraffin,” Märit says. “I forgot to fill the lamp.”

Tembi extinguishes the burning match.

“Will they be able to get in?”

“No,” Tembi answers.

They listen, breathing softly.

“I think there are some candles in the cupboard,” Märit says quietly, as if the sound of her voice might alert the locusts to her presence. “On the top shelf.”

Tembi crosses to the cupboard on the opposite wall and fumbles along the top shelf. Her fingers touch the glass of a bottle, then the slim shapes of two candles. She lights one, holding it tilted until the wax softens in the heat, then drips the hot wax onto the lid of a cosmetic jar and sets the candle upright. When she reaches for the second candle on the shelf her fingers again touch the bottle, and she brings it down into the light, the amber liquid revealing that the contents are brandy.

Tembi lights the second candle and sets it on the dresser. The glow is meager, but comforting. She sits down again next to Märit and unscrews the lid of the bottle. When she tips it up to her lips and swallows a small amount, Tembi notices how much her hands are trembling.

“What is happening out there?” Märit says. “Where do they come from?” Her face is haggard, the lines of strain exaggerated in the candle’s light.

“Drink some of this,” Tembi says, handing the bottle to Märit, who has begun to shiver. “It will warm you.”

She drinks, coughs, sips again, then holds the bottle clenched between her thighs.

“Where do they come from?” Märit says again.

“They just come.”

“But why? Why here?”

Tembi glances up at the rustling thatch. “I have heard stories from the old people. Some years too many eggs hatch at the same time, and there is not enough food, so the locusts fly off to look for food in another place. And because there are so many of them, when they find a place that has food, like this farm, they eat everything.”

“What do you mean ‘everything’?”

“They will eat all the flowers, and the leaves, the grass, the fruit.”

“Our gardens? The orchard, the maize? All our food?” Märit holds her head in her hands. Now there will be nothing to eat, it will be a desert, they will finally have to leave the farm. “But will the locusts stay here?”

“No, they will go when there is nothing left to eat. They are always hungry, so they will go somewhere else. The swarm will move on, some will die, some will be eaten by birds, some will be blown away by winds, some will drown in rivers and dams. But they will lay their eggs, and in another year, somewhere else, there will be a swarm like this one, falling on some other farm.”

Turning her glance to the window, Märit asks, “Is there nothing we can do? It’s so awful.”

“We can only wait. For tomorrow, and what it will bring.”

Märit takes another sip of the brandy. “I felt I was going to be eaten alive. They were all over me, under my clothes, in my hair, nibbling at my skin.” She shudders and brushes at her lap. “I feel dirty, like they’ve left their eggs on me.” She clasps her hands together as they begin to tremble.

“I will run a bath for you,” Tembi says. “It will make you feel better.”

When the bath has been filled, Märit undresses and sinks into the water. Tembi shuts the door softly.

“Tembi, leave the door open,” Märit calls.

She lies in the bath, weeping quietly, and the tears roll down her cheeks into the scented water, and when at last she gets up, she finds Tembi fast asleep. Märit climbs under the quilt and folds herself against Tembi’s warm back. Finally, she sleeps.

Märit wakes to a pattering against the window. She hears the gurgling sound of water pouring from a gutter. She slips out from beneath the quilt, careful not to wake Tembi, and draws the edge of the curtains open.
It is night still, darkness beyond the window panes. She listens again, then opens the window carefully, just a minute crack. A thin stream of fresh moist air blows across her face and the sound of falling water is louder. Rain.

Opening the window another couple of inches, Märit stretches her hand outside. The clean cold air blows across her face and she tastes the sweetness upon her lips. The locusts have gone.

Leaving the window open, Märit returns to bed, curving her body again next to Tembi, pressing her cheek against the sleeping warmth.

This is how she used to sleep with Ben, against the solid comfort of his back. The memory of it brings a pang of loneliness. It has been so long since she felt the touch of another hand, since she was embraced. She knows that a part of her spirit is withering from the lack of touch.

She presses herself closer in against Tembi, who murmurs a question in her sleep.

“It is raining,” Märit whispers.

A
T FIRST LIGHT
the two women creep out of the bedroom and down the corridor to the front door.

“Ugh, it smells bad in here,” Tembi exclaims, covering her mouth against the lingering odor of rot and burned cloth. She steps delicately, trying to avoid the bodies of the locusts littering the floor, some of them still wriggling with life.

Märit, who has put on a pair of sandals, unbolts the front door and pushes it wide open to let in the clean morning air. The first thing she sees on the veranda are the bare stalks of the potted geraniums—every leaf, every petal has been stripped from the stalks of the plants, leaving them like winter skeletons.

The sky is overcast and gray and a thin fog hangs over the fields. From the misty distance near the river a plover calls gently, and a moment later, from the opposite direction, a second bird answers. Märit’s eyes move across to the lawn, the flower garden, the vegetable patch. She gasps.

“They’ve eaten everything! Everything! Oh, Tembi, look what they’ve done!”

Märit and Tembi walk out into the devastation. A swath has been cut across the land, as if some strange machine has swept over the farm in the night and left ruin in its wake. Trees denuded of leaves, showing bare branches against the sky, maize plants that are nothing more than scraggly stalks with a few bare cobs, a once green lawn that is now bare earth, muddy and slippery underfoot.

Tembi pauses at the remnants of the vegetable garden and shakes her head in disbelief. “Every single plant,” she says with despair in her voice.
“The beans, the tomatoes, the squash.” Crouching down she fingers the few stalks remaining. “Nothing left. All our food—gone!”

The locusts have devoured everything in the vegetable garden, stripped the maize fields, the flower beds, the potted plants on the veranda, the trees around the house, the lawn, the hydrangea bushes against the walls.

Märit stands in front of the flower garden, staring at the destruction, at the wantonness of it, at the thoroughness of it. Ben had worked so hard to build this garden and the lawn surrounding the beds, and she and Tembi had struggled to maintain the flowers, to have something colorful in this land of brown and ochre.

But perhaps the whole thing was too artificial to survive. These imported flowers, the roses, the snapdragons. Like me, she thinks, something artificial imported here.

She notices a locust crawling in the soil and she raises her foot, then brings it down hard on the insect, crushing and grinding the body into the earth with the sole of her sandal.

Tembi sees the pain on Märit’s face as she surveys the damage, and the anger as she raises her foot and stamps it on the ground.

“Don’t worry, Märit, things will grow again here. It is good soil.”

“Is God trying to destroy us, Tembi? Does God hate us?”

Tembi shakes her head. “Look, the mulberry trees are untouched. God has spared us. You are too harsh in your thoughts.”

Märit looks down at the soil, at the crushed insect, and then raises her eyes to survey the damage done by the swarm. “Once, a long time ago, I was on the other side of the fence, there beyond the koppie, when a kudu came right up to me, so close that I could feel its breath on my fingers, and I had the thought that nature is good, that animals are good, that there is an order and a harmony to nature. But now…” She shakes her head. “Now when I see what nature has done I wonder if there is any goodness or harmony in anything.”

“We cannot understand everything that happens,” Tembi says. “The locusts came because there was a hunger in the swarm, and they came to our farm because it was here. It could have been any farm, at any time. How could the locusts know we were here, and that we are struggling to live?”

“Oh, Tembi, I wish I had your wisdom. You are right. God has put goodness in us. He has put it in you.”

Tembi smiles shyly and takes Märit’s hand. “Come. Not everything has been destroyed.”

Tembi walks away in the direction of the windmill and climbs up a few of the metal rungs. “Märit, the orchard! Come and look. Everything is still there.”

Märit runs to join Tembi on the rungs of the ladder, both of them climbing as high as they can.

The fruit orchard is untouched, the rows of trees still with their leaves and the peaches and apricots hanging on the branches. But around the house there is only bare soil.

“As if we were singled out,” Märit observes.

“No. It was just chance, and maybe because we had maize and flowers and green things that the locusts saw in their hunger. What happened was not against us.”

“I suppose you are right.”

Tembi nudges Märit’s shoulder with her foot. “Of course I am right. Now go down, we have to clean the house.”

The women spend the rest of the morning sweeping up the bodies of locusts from the rooms, many of them still alive and fluttering. Märit is filled with revulsion as she wields the broom and carries the bin of wriggling insects out to the fire pit.

Tembi mops the floors with soap and water and washes down the walls where insects have been crushed. Märit drags the burned cushions and rug out to the refuse heap. Later, wood has to be chopped and brought in from the shed.

In the afternoon the drizzle ceases and sun breaks through the cloud. Birds have descended on the fields, feeding on the remaining locusts.

As Märit sweeps the veranda, a distant movement catches her eye, something on the periphery of the farm. She peers in that direction for a moment but sees nothing and continues with her sweeping. An antelope probably, she thinks, but that quick glimpse has imprinted a human shape on her eye. Could it be Michael? she wonders. Does he still wander the land, somewhere on the edges? Or is it someone else? She and Tembi
have been so completely alone on the farm that she has forgotten about neighbors, about the town. What is happening in the rest of the country? As she works through the afternoon she looks up often, and does not see that movement again. She convinces herself that what she saw was an antelope.

When the sun descends in the sky, when the shadows begin to lengthen, Tembi calls Märit in. As she goes up the steps of the veranda Märit turns one last time to look back to the borders of the farm, and sees something move in the stillness, something darting furtively out of sight. But so quick that once again after a moment of peering intently towards the trees she is not sure. She enters the house, where Tembi has lit the lamp in the kitchen and the fire burns warm in the stove.

Before retiring for the night Märit sits on the veranda for a while. The lamps have been extinguished, the stars flicker in the sky, the frogs croak down by the river, nearby the crickets chirrup with the same rhythm they take up every night.

We have come through, Märit thinks. The vegetables will grow again, there is still fruit in the trees, and in the storeroom there is still maize meal. We will survive.

She rises, breathes deeply of the night air, and stretches her arms above her head as a yawn overcomes her. And there in the darkness of the veldt a light flickers. Just once. A single point of light in the darkness of the night, like the flicker of a star, then gone.

She stands a long time staring into the darkness. She can’t tell how near or how far that flicker of light appeared; whether it was the flare of a match or a flashlight, a vehicle or a lamp.

Is someone out there, watching the farm, watching them?

When she goes back into the house Märit makes sure that the front and back doors are bolted tight, and that the window catches are fastened in all the rooms. And that night her rest is troubled and her sleep is light, because she listens, and she thinks about the figure out there, the point of light in the darkness, and she knows that she and Tembi are not alone.

I
N THE MORNING
, Tembi appears in the bedroom doorway. “Märit, there is no water.”

Märit sits up, groggy, tired from an unsettled night. “No water? What do you mean?”

“There is no water from the taps.”

Märit rises from the bed. “What is it now?” she says. “What else can go wrong?”

“There is no water from the kitchen taps, nothing from the yard tap either. I don’t know why.”

In the bathroom Märit turns on the sink taps, then those in the tub. A few spurts of water gush from the faucet and then cease with a shuddering of the pipes. “It must be the windmill, the pump or something. We’ll have to take a look.” She rubs her face wearily. “Is there any coffee?”

Tembi shakes her head. “Without water I can’t make coffee.”

“All right, I’ll get dressed.”

The vanes of the windmill are turning as usual in the light breeze, each revolving blade of metal catching the morning light with a brief reflected flash.

“It turns but there is no water,” Tembi says.

Märit stands with her hands on her hips looking up at the windmill. “It seems to be working all right up there. It must be the pump. Did you check the tap in the kraal?”

“Not yet,” Tembi says.

“Well, let’s look at the pump first,” Märit says, moving towards the small shed at the base of the windmill where the pump is housed.

After a moment of studying the pipes and valves and rods, she shakes her head. “I’ve no idea how any of this works. Do you?”

“I don’t know anything about machines.”

“Go and see if the tap in the kraal is working. I’ll try and figure this out.”

None of the metal parts that make up the pump mechanism are moving except for the long rod that extends upwards to the vanes. Märit traces its passage into the pump, trying to understand which wheel turns which cog. She finds the pipe that carries the water up from the ground and leads out of the pump house. But in between this pipe and the windmill is a bit of intricate machinery housed inside a bolted cover.

When Tembi returns with the information that the kraal tap is not functioning either, Märit taps the pump housing and says, “The problem is in here, I think. Maybe we can open it.”

Märit tries the nuts and discovers that they turn easily, with just a touch of her fingers, as if someone has recently unfastened them. When she gets the cover off she sees immediately that a thin copper rod between two cogwheels has snapped in two.

“That’s the problem. The solution is another matter. I don’t know where we will find a replacement part, or how we will fit it together. Unless we go to Klipspring.”

Tembi shakes her head. “We don’t need the pump. We can fetch water from the river. We can wash in the river and bring our drinking water back in buckets.”

Märit stands up and dusts her hands clean. She takes a last look at the pump mechanism before replacing the housing cover. Somewhere on the farm she will find a piece of metal, and somehow find a way to fit it in place of the broken rod. Yes, she can bathe in the river, and they can bring drinking water up to the house, but without the pump there is no way to irrigate, and there will be no way to grow vegetables again.

With two buckets each, they make their way down to the river and return more slowly to the house with heavier loads. The water is poured into basins and kettles.

“Shall we make coffee now or fetch another load?” Märit asks.

“You make the coffee, I’ll fetch more water.”

“No, we’ll do one more together.”

This time when they return, the buckets are emptied into the bathtub.

“I think we have enough for now,” Märit says.

“Yes, we can get some more later.”

When they have eaten their breakfast and drunk their coffee the two women make a third trip to the river. Halfway to the house Märit sets down her buckets and flexes her shoulders. “I’m aching already.”

“We will have to get used to this.”

“I know.” But she resolves to try to fix the pump later. She will not let this latest setback defeat her.