ELIZABETH'S POTATO

Short Story by Dylan Weston

Elizabeth was a proud Xhosa whose self-containment was always a source of envy both for me and others who were acquainted with her. I met her when her husband, Johannes, came to work for us.

One hot summer day, with a concerto of flies and cicada beetles buzzing loudly in the yard, I heard a gentle knock at the back door. There on the threshold stood an elderly, grey-haired man with his hat in his gnarled hands. "Good afternoon, madam. I am looking for work." He spoke politely in Afrikaans, his eyes pleading.

"Do you have a family? " I asked. In South Africa, at this time, two things were vital: did the man have a large family who could also help on the farm? And did he have a passbook?

"Yes, I do. A wife and three children and my grandchild."

"Do you and your family have a passbook for Brakpan?"

"Yes."

"Come, then, let me see it."

Only once I had satisfied myself that we were legally able to consider employing him, did I ask him anything about his skills and experience as a farm labourer. He seemed capable and responsible, so I hired him.

Later, when they brought their meagre belongings onto the farm - on a horse-drawn cart with everything and everyone piled high above the road - I met his wife-Elizabeth. She seemed better educated than her husband, but that’s often the case in Africa. She spoke English well, which was unusual for farming folk. Most farmers are Afrikaans-speaking, and therefore most blacks spoke their own mother-tongue and Afrikaans. However, here was this short, solid woman who spoke a fluent, confident English, and was proud of it.

Elizabeth was a lady. She was gentle, dignified and incredibly noble. She came to work for me as a nanny for my two children. Well, that’s officially what she did, but in fact she became a friend and companion. She was at least sixty, but she was not sure of her age since she had no birth certificate. So we assessed her age according to her earliest memories.

I was constantly amazed at how meticulously clean she was, and how well groomed. Her green overalls, always green, were starched and ironed so crisply that she could have opened letters with the creases in her shirt sleeves. She lived in a tin-shanty, which her husband was very adept at erecting within a day. This kya was without the luxury of a window with glass, or running water. Her daughters would carry water to their shanty in buckets borne on their heads. They swayed rhythmically under the load which they bore for a half mile from the tap. They cooked on an old, worn, coal stove. The acrid smell of fire filled the entire home, permeating their clothes and skin, an odour that never seemed to leave them. But, somehow, Elizabeth escaped it.

Her life had been eventful since she had worked both in the city and on the farms. She had a broader horizon than the maize fields and cattle. She often sat and told me stories of her life, and this one will always live with me. Its horror and cruelty made me feel ashamed to be white. Also, she awoke in me a feeling of dread and disgust at how a whole people can be exploited and ravished by others who claim to be civilised.

We were in the kitchen preparing dinner and discussing the latest atrocity of our neighbour, Mr. Prinsloo - also known as Die Prokureur or The Lawyer. Die Prokureur was infamous for his violence of temper which he exercised with impunity. The previous day I had occasion to call the police. The labourers reported they had been overwhelmed in their kyas by a fetid, foul odour. The smell seemed to come from Prinsloo's newly ploughed field. From our fence-line they could see nothing which could be the source of the noxious fumes. They only saw the dogs sniffing at a distant spot as though transfixed.

Then Solly, our foreman, and Amos, his nephew, went over the fence to investigate. They were horrified to find a body. It proved to be the body of a young labourer who, I later discovered, had been punished by Die Prokureur This Sotho had been dragged while tied to the back of the tractor across the ploughed furrows until his arm and leg were torn from his body. At some time, either during or after this torture, the Sotho had died. And so his mutilated body was discovered, there in the winter stubble lying in the furrows near our fence. I was summoned to come and bear witness, and what a burden it was. He lay all contorted, mud-spattered, bereft of life and dignity, unknown, a half man. The stench was appalling, and the corpse had become a little bloated in the heat of the day. I ran terror-stricken to the phone. We had an old-fashioned party-line served by an operator whose cool voice and sense of authority calmed me.

We did not have to wait long before we heard the thunder of the police trucks coming full tilt up our gravel drive. The police came to a dusty, skidding halt. Once I had pointed out that it would prove quicker to simply continue driving to the site nearest our fence-line, they tore away once again at full speed. Their trucks bounded over the veldt and then halted aggressively. The officers climbed over the fence and ran to the spot where several black labourers stood with their heads respectfully bowed, hats held humbly in their work-weary hands.

The remains were removed once an ambulance had arrived and sent to a local mortuary. All the labourers who were questioned said they knew nothing. Some muttered, "Die Prokureur." Some said, "Ask the Baas of the farm." Later that day I learnt that the police had gone to visit Mr. Prinsloo and that they had left quite satisfied and apologetic for having troubled him with this matter. So yet again it seemed that he had escaped retribution.

Elizabeth and I discussed how there are those who are guilty of dreadful crimes and yet escape discovery. Elizabeth assured me there would come a time even for Die Prokureur. God would see to it. I was sceptical, but her confidence in the power of truth was profound. Just then our talk ended abruptly with a cacophony of screen door slamming, door opening, dogs moving resentfully out of someone's path, and finally, Edward making his cursing way into the kitchen.

Edward, my gardener, brought in a bushel of freshly gathered potatoes. They smelled of the earth, damp and mysterious. The mud clung to their plumpness and on some an earthworm still wriggled in the attached mud. A rich harvest from Edward's vegetable garden, which he proudly presented, grinning from ear to ear. Elizabeth and I laughed at his self-satisfied jig as he threw them into the kitchen sink for us to wash. She washed them off thoroughly, accustomed to such work. Then she held one fat roundish potato up for closer scrutiny.

"Hau! Madam, look! A button - here in the potato! See, only a tiny piece shows." Then she took the paring knife and sliced the potato - and there, lodged in its white starchiness was an old pyjama button. The button had lain in the earth and the potato had grown around it, preserving it for future use. Perhaps, to be presented as evidence of a careless laundress. I was surprised. Brought up in town, I had never realised that such things happened. I noticed that Elizabeth's attention was elsewhere, lost in thought and time. She suddenly turned to me, and as though focusing on a distant page; and then she began her unforgettable story.

"When I was young and still with my mother we lived on a huge farm in the Free State." Elizabeth dried her hands on her apron and sat down on a chair. I knew the signs. This was to be a long story - one that she savoured.

"The farmer was one of those men whom everyone feared and hated. He was a very large red-faced, beefy man, who rode over his property with authority and shouted at us constantly. He either bellowed new orders or perfunctory insults. I cannot remember ever hearing him speak kindly or lovingly to his wife. He seemed always to shout at her, too." I shifted in my chair and wondered how she saw my relationship with my husband. Elizabeth just smiled, and went on intently.

"He had many acres under potatoes, as the farm was close to a river and we could lead the water to the fields. A worker was said to have been killed, some two years prior, by this Baas during a disagreement. We never knew whether this was a story or a fact, but we feared him all the more.

"Riding with a sjambok coiled on his saddle, he would lash out at any worker - just to show us how much power he had over us. I was a child - only ten - but to me he represented the Devil, what with his red face, his dark horse, and his shouting. Yes, the Devil, Die Prokureur even.

"One day Samora, a worker we all knew, disappeared from the compound. The story spread like a veldt fire that he had been killed by the farmer. But no one ever found the body. We decided that, like so many others, he had merely run away from the farmer never to return, not even for his belongings." Elizabeth started to peel the potatoes slowly. The skins formed into large curls which wound their way into a colander held between her knees. The potatoes were then put into a basin of water on the table. She worked neatly and without any unnecessary movement.

"The potato field was ploughed and planted around this time, and we were very busy tending the plants and weeding the lands. The days and months passed, as they do, and in time the potatoes were ready for harvesting.

"Everyone on the farm had to work that day: men, women, and children, no matter how small, even the very old. We bent to our work pulling the potatoes out of the ground, back and forth, row after row. The sun beat down on us as we worked and it felt good to be alive. The earth with its damp, rich loamy aroma and the sun's warmth made us sing. We sang also to shorten those long hours, and because, somehow, there is honesty in work. That night we looked forward to cooking some of the fruits of our labour." I noticed a wry smile on Elizabeth's face, and that she was oblivious to her surroundings. She had journeyed south to Thaba Nchu, in the Orange Free State, and she was once more a girl of ten. She was peeling her mother's potatoes now, and not Edward's.

"As my mother cut the potatoes, she found hairs in them - human hairs. My mother screamed. Were the stories true? Could this be all that remained of the workers who had disappeared? Potato after potato was the same. As though these men had risen from the dead to betray the Devil's work.

"We all kept our peace, as we knew what our fate would be if we spoke. The police would never believe us - we are only blacks. But God would act. We believed that. It was all we could believe. And He did, too.

"In the winter, when the land lay fallow and dry, a great wind rose and drove across the ploughed acres. The maize crop rustled, crackled and snapped stiffly under the blast. There was a spark born on God's breath, and the brittle maize lands started burning. The flames were tall and taunted the farmer. He rode arrogantly to the land on his dark horse, shouting to the workers to come with wet meal bags to beat out the flames. Then, as though God had waited to entrap him, the wind changed direction, and the farmer with his cursing mouth open, horse and all, were swallowed by those flames of retribution." Elizabeth nodded, nodding to herself, affirming that there is justice, perhaps? A great, deep stillness suffocated me.

"Nothing was ever found of his body." Elizabeth smiled, looking at me directly for the first time. "Only his coiled, impotent sjambok