The World Beneath Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.