The World Beneath
Authors: Janice Warman
I
f he stretched his fingers out in the dark, he could feel a damp wall. His head throbbed. How long had he been here? He lay quietly. There was an earth floor beneath him. His hands — he brushed the earth off them, then ran them over his face. It was sticky, and when he touched his nose, he cried out. One eye was swollen shut. On the back of his head, he found the source of his pain: a lump so big that it filled his hand.
It was quiet — a hollow kind of quiet that made him think he was alone in this place, wherever it was. He held his breath and listened. No birds sang. Yet this place must be in the veld. Perhaps it was a village. His stomach clenched in fear as he looked for a chink of light. Even at night a little light should leak in around a door; even in the country there was moonlight, starlight; even in the country there was movement, little rustles as things ran through the grass. Yet there was nothing. Perhaps he was dead. No, if he were dead, he would not feel pain. Or thirst. He was so thirsty. He felt around for a cup. Had someone left him some water?
He lay still again, with his dizzy head turned to one side, and resolved to think and to breathe slowly, to calm himself, to gather his strength so he could get out of here. He ran his hands over his body. He was dressed. He wriggled his toes. He had no shoes on, but his feet felt OK. Sometimes they went for your feet. Then, just as he thought,
I am going to roll over onto my hands and knees, crawl to the wall, and try to stand —
The boy woke up. He was lying behind the comforting bulk of his mother. His heart was thudding fast. He shot out of bed and crouched against the far wall, arms over his head. “No!” he whispered before he could stop himself.
Then it came to him. The dream was about Sipho. In the dream, he
was
Sipho. His big brother, his strong, tall brother, who could swing him around and carry him high on his shoulders, Sipho with the deep laugh and wide, handsome face.
Before he’d thought what he was doing, he had shaken his mother awake. “Mama! Mama!” he sobbed. “Sipho! Sipho — he is hurt! I dreamed — I dreamed —”
His mother woke instantly. “No,” she said gently. “No, he is working in Jo’burg and he sends us money. You know that. You mustn’t worry.” Slowly, he stopped crying and fell asleep again while she lay looking into the darkness, her arms around him, tears streaming down her face.
Presently, she saw threads of light between the door and its frame and slipped out of bed, disentangling her arms from the small body. Sipho used to sleep like that too, before he became a man. Before he went away to Jo’burg to earn a living. Before he sent money back to her in Cape Town and to her parents in the Ciskei, for her younger children. Before —
By this time she had crossed the yard and gone up the red stone steps to the back door. She slipped her key into the lock and raised a hand to her
doek
, tucking the scarf in neatly at the back. It was almost time to take up the tea.
B
eauty! Beauty! Where are you?” Mrs. Malherbe came rushing down the corridor and barged through the green baize door. “We need to sort out the menus before I can . . .”
Quickly, Joshua jumped into his hiding place by the kitchen. It was under the back stairs, which led out of the servants’ hall, up to the first floor. It was a perfect space for him, and he sat here when he could, listening to the sounds of the house.
It was like a little room, a cupboard, really, into which the vacuum cleaner and the polisher were crammed. There wasn’t much space left over, but there was enough for a boy with no shoes to crawl into the musty wooden dark. Joshua had pulled an old blanket in there once, one he had taken from Betsy’s basket. She was a basset hound, who sometimes let him crawl in with her and give her a cuddle. There was a big fuss over the missing blanket. His mother had to swear that she hadn’t taken it home or sold it.
“Sold it?” she fumed, as they sat in the damp paraffin smell of her room. “Why would I want to sell that old thing?” That was the trouble. They always thought you were stealing from them. Joshua didn’t tell his mother he had the blanket, but she caught him anyway. She was getting the Hoover out of the cupboard when she found it.
“Hayi,”
she said. “You have shamed me in front of the Madam. We must give it back.” But he begged and pleaded, and in the end she left it where it was. At least that way, he supposed, she could say it had just somehow gotten into the cupboard; she didn’t know how.
And it meant he was out of the way. In fact, he wasn’t meant to be in the house at all. He should have been in the country with his grandparents. But Mrs. Malherbe was turning a blind eye, which was what these people did when they wanted to help you. Other times, they said, “How can I believe you?” or “You can’t fool me — I’m not stupid.”
They were, though. Most of them. How many of them could speak three or four languages? How many of them could run a house that size, cleaning it through every day, making the beds, doing the washing and the cooking, and still look after a set of fractious white children?