The World Beneath (5 page)

He went on his way, pleased with himself. Of course Goodman would notice; but Joshua would explain it to him. Joshua knew he would be happy to help a brother.

He remembered the baby frog and went to look for it. It was back in the filter basket, clinging to the side, its little chest pumping with the effort of breathing through the chemical fumes. He picked it out gently and found a big cardboard box. He could make a little pool out of a bowl and put leaves in it.

The little frog shook in his hands, terrified. Joshua paused for a moment. It might not be good for it to be kept in a box. He decided to keep it in there until he could take it across to the common and release it into the pond.

The trouble was that the frogs thought the swimming pool was a beautiful blue pond. But once they jumped into it, they found it was toxic and couldn’t get out. Then the filter system drew them in, and they ended up in the filter basket, dead or dying.

He thought of Tsumalo, who had escaped, and wondered how long he would stay, and whether the police would come and find him.

Not if he could help it.

M
ama . . .” Joshua was sitting at the kitchen table, kicking the metal legs, drinking milk out of a tin mug. A question was forming in his brain, but he hadn’t quite decided what it was when she gave him a sharp kick on the shin, whisked the mug out of his hands, and leaped to her feet.

Mr. Malherbe walked in. Joshua kept his eyes fixed on the floor. He was breathing fast. Had he conjured him up? He’d been thinking about him, had been about to ask his mother . . . and he wasn’t supposed to be in here . . .

He felt himself being raised off his seat like a puppy, by the scruff of the neck, his shirt bunched and choking. Mr. Malherbe’s breath was hot on his ear.

“
What
is this boy doing in here? Drinking our milk? Eating our food? What have I told you, Beauty?”

“I’m sorry, Master. I’m sorry.” Her voice was light with fright.

The man moved to the door, his grip tightening, and with one swift movement he threw Joshua into the yard, as you might throw a cat or a bowl of water.

Joshua landed silently, heavily, a choking in his throat as his knees and elbows skinned in the yellow grit.

“I don’t want to see him in here again — understand? Otherwise he goes. And that’s it.”

The kitchen door slammed. The baize door swung and swung on its heavy hinges. Joshua scrambled to his mother’s room and jumped into the bed, pulling the covers over his head.

In the kitchen, Beauty silently washed the dishes.

Upstairs, in the house, another door banged.

Presently, Joshua ran to find Tsumalo, who held him at arm’s length, looked grimly down at the grazed knees, then hugged him. They walked slowly to the far end of the yard, where the pool lay quietly limpid behind its high hedges, Tsumalo leaning on the walking stick. They sat on the steps, and he washed Joshua’s knees and elbows off with the water. It stung. The blood floated away in spiral whispers. Joshua watched, distracted; he wanted to make more of them. They went too quickly.

Tsumalo made him some hot sweet tea over the paraffin stove in the shed and watched him drink it. Only then did he speak.

“You want me to fix him?”

“Who?”

“Him.” A sullen jerk of the head toward the house, a sneer at the corner of the mouth. “Mr. High-and-Mighty.”

“No!”
Joshua almost shouted. “No — you can’t.”

“Can’t I? That’s what they like to think. That we can’t. Do. Anything.” Tsumalo’s face was rigid with anger.

Joshua was silent. He looked down. This was not his Tsumalo. This was somebody else. Somebody who frightened him.

Just as Joshua moved to go back to his mother, Tsumalo put his hand out in a conciliatory gesture. “Don’t worry,” he said more gently. “I won’t.” He paused. “It’s not time. Not yet.”

A
fter that, Joshua kept to his mother’s room until he was sure Mr. Malherbe had gone each morning. He kept out of his way when he came home, late and angry after an evening at the club, hefting his dried-up supper out of the warming oven and straight into the trash.

Then he would take a last brandy out to the chair by the pool. Joshua, sitting in the fig tree, had learned the art of silence and sat still as a leaf. Just once a fig fell, dislodged by his slipping foot, and crushed its split redness on the man’s shoulder.

He cursed and flicked it away, and Joshua held his breath until the tall, stooped figure rose and stumbled into the house.

Each afternoon Joshua was anxious that Mr. Malherbe would come back early from work, pop home for lunch, or swing by to pick up his clubs and take an afternoon off to play golf. He had never, to his knowledge, done any of these things. But Joshua devised a plan, just in case: he found he could climb the loquat tree in the front garden and stay completely hidden in its glossy dark leaves. He had a good view of the front gate and the section of road up which the silver Mercedes purred each evening, never early; often late.

In any case, every evening he could hear the car approaching, at which sound he dropped to the loamy ground and hurtled along the narrow alley at the side of the house, tripping over the tangle of nasturtiums in his haste to reach his mother’s room.

He was in the tree now, watching the sun make the gray pavement sparkle, blurring his eyes and bringing them back into focus, over and over again, until they ached.

There was a noise from the next-door garden. He looked down. A little girl was pushing a toy lawn mower back and forth, back and forth, humming to herself.
“Vrrrm, vrrrm. Vrrrm, vrrrm.”
She was wearing a flouncy yellow dress of the kind favored by white Madams for their daughters, until their daughters got old enough to hate them.

Joshua had a sudden desire to frighten her. She looked so cute and smug. So plump and well-fed. Phumla, who lived so far away with his grandparents, had never had a dress like that.

Before he knew he had done it, he had flung a loquat at the girl. But his aim was faulty and it landed short. She stopped pushing the lawn mower and picked up the hard yellow fruit. Then she looked at the tree. Joshua sat perfectly still.

She walked over to the corner of the lawn and looked up.

She couldn’t see him. Could she? She could. She smiled a fat little smile at him, a confident smile.

“Hello. What are you doing up there? Are you the boy Hester says is living next door? Should we have a loquat feast? I love loquats, but Mummy says I mustn’t have them. She says they give me a runny tummy!” And she laughed.

She started climbing up the wooden fence.

“No!” he said. “You mustn’t. Stay down there — I’ll throw some down.” Anything to stop her. He could see it — her mother would glance out at the lawn and find her precious angel gone. She would find she was up a tree with the black boy from next door. And he would be in trouble. Big trouble.

He began to tear the loquats off the branches, desperately, and toss them down. Then he stopped. Half of them were unripe. She would get the runs. And she would tell her mother how she’d gotten them.

Joshua stalled. “They’ll make you sick. They’re green. Wait here — I’ll get you something better.” He jumped to the ground and gathered some nasturtiums, the yellow and orange flowers thick in his hands, their sticky green stems trailing, and climbed back up.

He reached down over the fence and gave them to her. “Try these — you can suck the nectar out. They’re sweet.”

She looked skeptical. But she tried one, grimacing, and then her round face lit up under the heavy brown bangs. “They’re like fairy sweets!” She grasped them tight. “Get me some more.”

It wasn’t a request.

He climbed down again, and as he did he heard Hester’s voice. “Miss Anna, you must come in for your bath now.”

“O-o-o-o-o-oh,” said Anna. “But I’m busy, Hester!”

He could hear a rising whine in her voice.

“Come along now, Miss Anna.” Hester’s voice was weary.

It reminded him. He had heard Hester tell his mother: “Madam is kind, but that Miss Anna — she is like the boss of the house! Even the Master worries what Anna wants.”

His mother had said: “It’s because she was sick when she was little.” She nodded toward Joshua and dropped her voice. “And Mrs. Brown, she . . .” and he missed the rest. “So they can’t have any more . . .”

Any more what? He never found out.

I
t seemed that Miss Anna had decided she liked him. The next day, when he climbed the tree, she was waiting for him in the next-door garden.

“Boy!” she called imperiously. “Boy! Come down! I want to play with you!”

Not if he could help it. He slithered down the trunk as quietly as he could and tiptoed along the alley by the high wooden fence that separated the yards, but she was ahead of him. Just as he emerged into the dusty backyard, he heard a breathless giggle and saw her wide blue eye at a knothole in the fence.

Later he appealed to his mother. She shook her head and sighed. There was nothing you could do about the vagaries of white people. Even their children. He would have to live with it. Stay away from the fence. Keep his head down. Stay out of trouble.

He went down the overgrown path to find Tsumalo and gave the whistle that they used as a code. Tsumalo opened the door a crack and beckoned him in. He listened to Joshua’s story, then smiled and put his warm hand on Joshua’s head.

“You are already having trouble with the women. It is because you are so handsome. It is your own fault.”

And he said no more, just laughed and picked up his notebook as if to say,
I have more important things to worry about. Grown-up things.

The next day Anna came visiting. He heard the gate clang and the footsteps on the path and the confident knock on the front door. Beauty answered; it was after lunch, and Mrs. Malherbe had gone straight up to rest.

Anna was bearing an apple pie, a gift from her mother. As soon as she had handed it over, she asked in her high reedy voice if “the boy” was in. She wanted to see him.

Hidden beneath the weeping willow, Joshua put his head on his knees and blocked his ears. His mother would call him, he knew. She had to do what the girl said. And he didn’t want to hear.

Surprisingly, his mother said he was out; she needn’t have bothered, for Anna found him all by herself and arrived, flush-faced and triumphant, through the curtain of fronds, just as he was waiting for the gate to close behind her.

He stared at her. “Go!” he said finally. “You mustn’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Because you cannot play with me.”

“Why not?”

Well, why not? He could not explain. Instead, he mutely held out his own black wrist and laid it by her white one, so she could see the contrast.

She stared down at them and then at him. A faint inkling dawned, he could see.

“But my mummy doesn’t mind. Really she doesn’t!”

Joshua rolled his eyes, began to put both hands up as if to surrender, then broke and ran. He did not look back, but as he rounded the corner of the house, he heard the gate clash to.

He spent the rest of the afternoon in the cupboard under the stairs.