Maru by Bessie Head

Author:Bessie Head
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Botswana
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1970-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Part Two

The rhythm of sunrise, the rhythm of sunset, filled her life. In the distance, a village proceeded with its own life but she knew not what it was – who married, who died, who gave birth to children – nor the reason why two women on her pathway, back and forth to school, continually insulted each other in vile language for stealing each other’s husbands. She was not a part of it and belonged nowhere. In fact, so quiet and insignificant were her movements that the people of Dilepe village almost forgot that there was such a thing as a Masarwa teacher. Now and then she caught their eye on her way to the shops or to school. They would laugh a bit, turn to each other and say: “There goes the friend of Mistress Dikeledi.” She had no life outside those words.

Yet there were half suns glowing on the horizons of her heart. It was Moleka. Now and then she would pass him in the village. She could quite clearly see that he made a secret of the matter but his eyes glowed like the early morning sunrise when he glanced at her briefly. The strange thing was that the love aroused no violent emotions but blended in with the flow and rhythm of life in Dilepe. It was something to be accepted, painlessly, because there was no question of who loved whom. She thought: “He will never approach me, because I am a Masarwa.” And it was something her whole way of life had prepared her for. Love and happiness had always been a little bit far away from life as other people lived it. There could have been no better training ground than that of Margaret Cadmore, senior, whose own heart continually muddled her and who had been a woman who lived without love, without her equal in soul stature. She had missed something and was often irritable and impatient, like an unmarried woman, but the effect of it had made her draw on her own inner resources, in order to survive the ordeal of being married to a dead and stupid man.

The young girl had no confusion of heart, only the experience of being permanently unwanted by society in general. There was an inverse cycle in this. It had created in her an attraction for the unpredictable, for the types of personality most people could not abide or get along with, and for all forms of vigour and growth outside the normal patterns. Maybe she had loved a man like Moleka a thousand times, in the same odd, secret way. It did not disrupt her stability but it made the village of Dilepe hallowed ground. He fell in somewhere with those sunrises and sunsets, and the huge, spreading beauty of an old Makoba tree, just outside her window. There was a public water tap under the Makoba tree and all day barefoot women trailed up the hill to fill their water buckets and carry them home on their heads.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.