Читать «Маленький Темби. A Little Tembi» онлайн - страница 31

She did not often go to the garden; it ran of itself. Sometimes, passing, she saw the beds full of vegetables were running to waste; this meant that a new batch of Africans were in the compound, natives who had to be educated afresh to eat what was good for them. But now she had had her last baby, and employed two nannies in the nurseries, she felt free to spend more time at the clinic and at the garden. Here she made a point of being friendly to Tembi. She was not a person to bear grudges, though a feeling that he was not to be trusted barred him as a nurse. She would talk to him about her own children, and how they were growing, and would soon be going to school in the city. She would talk to him about keeping himself clean, and eating the right things; how he must earn good money so that he could buy shoes to keep his feet from the germ-laden dust; how he must be honest, always tell the truth and be obedient to the white people. While she was in the garden he would follow her around, his hoe trailing forgotten in his hand, his eyes fixed on her. 'Yes, missus; yes, my missus, he repeated continually. And when she left, he would implore: When are you coming again? Come again soon, my missus. She took to bringing him her own children's books, when they were too worn for use in the nursery. 'You must learn to read, Tembi, she would say. 'Then, when you want to get a job, you will earn more wages if you can say: "Yes, missus, I can read and write." You can take messages on the telephone then, and write down orders so that you don't forget them. 'Yes, missus, Tembi would say, reverently taking the books from her. When she left the garden, she would glance back, always a little uncomfortably, because of Tembi's intense devotion, and see him kneeling on the rich red soil, framed by the bright green of the vegetables, knitting his brows over the strange coloured pictures and the unfamiliar print.

This went on for about two years. She said to Willie: 'Tembi seems to have got over that funny business of his. He's really useful in that garden. I don't have to tell him when to plant things. He knows as well as I do. And he goes round the huts in the compound with the vegetables, persuading the natives to eat them. 'I bet he makes a bit on the side, said Willie, chuckling. 'Oh no, Willie, I'm sure he wouldn't do that.

And, in fact, he didn't. Tembi regarded himself as an apostle of the white man's way of life. He would say earnestly, displaying the baskets of carefully arranged vegetables to the native women: 'The Goodhearted One says it is right we should eat these things. She says eating them will save us from sickness. Tembi achieved more than Jane had done in years of propaganda.