This Was the Old Chief's Country by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page A

time, remembering that on the day of the snake it had taken ten minutes to find the root, someone asked: ‘Is it much farther, Gideon?’ And Gideon would answer over his shoulder, with angry politeness: ‘I’m looking for the root, baas.’ And indeed, he would frequently bend sideways and trail his hand among the grasses with a gesture that was insulting in its perfunctoriness. He walked them through the bush along unknown paths for two hours, in that melting destroying heat, so that the sweat trickled coldly down them and their heads ached. They were all quite silent: the Farquars because they were angry, the scientist because he was being proved right again; there was no such plant. His was a tactful silence.
    At last, six miles from the house, Gideon suddenly decided they had had enough; or perhaps his anger evaporated at that moment. He picked up, without an attempt at looking anything but casual, a handful of blue flowers from the grass, flowers that had been growing plentifully all down the paths they had come.
    He handed them to the scientist without looking at him, andmarched off by himself on the way home, leaving them to follow him if they chose.
    When they got back to the house, the scientist went to the kitchen to thank Gideon: he was being very polite, even though there was an amused look in his eyes. Gideon was not there. Throwing the flowers casually into the back of his car, the eminent visitor departed on his way back to his laboratory.
    Gideon was back in his kitchen in time to prepare dinner, but he was sulking. He spoke to Mrs Farquar like an unwilling servant. It was days before they liked each other again.
    The Farquars made enquiries about the root from their labourers. Sometimes they were answered with distrustful stares. Sometimes the natives said: ‘We do not know. We have never heard of the root.’ One, the cattle boy, who had been with them a long time, and had grown to trust them a little, said: ‘Ask your boy in the kitchen. Now, there’s a doctor for you. He’s the son of a famous medicine man who used to be in these parts, and there’s nothing he cannot cure.’
    Then he added politely: ‘Of course, he’s not as good as the white man’s doctor, we know that, but he’s good for us.’
    After some time, when the soreness had gone from between the Farquars and Gideon, they began to joke: ‘When are you going to show us the snake-root, Gideon?’ And he would laugh and shake his head, saying, a little uncomfortably: ‘But I did show you, missus, have you forgotten?’
    Much later, Teddy, as a schoolboy, would come into the kitchen and say: ‘You old rascal, Gideon! Do you remember that time you tricked us all by making us walk miles all over the veld for nothing? It was so far my father had to carry me!’
    And Gideon would double up with polite laughter. After much laughing, he would suddenly straighten himself up, wipe his old eyes, and look sadly at Teddy, who was grinning mischievously at him across the kitchen: ‘Ah, Little Yellow Head, how you have grown! Soon you will be grown up with a farm of your own …’

The Second Hut
    Before that season and his wife’s illness, he had thought things could get no worse: until then, poverty had meant not to deviate further than snapping point from what he had been brought up to think of as a normal life.
    Being a farmer (he had come to it late in life, in his forties) was the first test he had faced as an individual. Before he had always been supported, invisibly perhaps, but none the less strongly, by what his family expected of him. He had been a regular soldier, not an unsuccessful one, but his success had been at the cost of a continual straining against his own inclinations; and he did not know himself what his inclinations were. Something stubbornly unconforming kept him apart from his fellow officers. It was an inward difference: he did not