Colonial Ritual

THE THORN TREES by John McIntosh. 183 pages. Harcourt, Brace & World. $4.50.

This novel by a Rhodesian schoolteacher and ex-newspaperman demonstrates with a special horror how white civilization can fail in the face of the white man's degeneracy and corruption. The bush, the prickly pear and the thorn trees are creeping back over the paddocks of Sherwood Ranch, a once-prosperous farm in African "territory" on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. It is presumably in Bechuanaland, being also north of Kipling's "great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River," and whatever its political future, a colonist would probably do better on the moon.

Brandy at Sundown. A generation ago, it had seemed possible that the original pioneer settler, a Scot named Ferris, might have made an outpost of civilization in this ill-favored wilderness. He had cleared the bush, trained the natives in animal husbandry and domestic service, imported the piano, the chandelier, the stone lions at the stoep, wine glasses and even books. In the hands of Ferris' son, a potbellied boor named Archie, things fall apart--both literally and figuratively. The piano sinks through the termite-ridden floor, the chandelier is unlit, the glasses are broken, the cattle die of foot-and-mouth disease, and one of the lions is decapitated by one of the characters in a fit of rage. Colonial cafard--suffocating apathy--has set in. Nevertheless, Archie keeps up the forms of the sahib-settler's life. It is a gruesome parody of colonial ritual. There is tennis every afternoon with his daughter, after which they sit for the "sundowner" before dinner, served by a "boy" in a sashed uniform. But the tennis court has no lines, the "sundowner" is sickening peach brandy bootlegged by Dutch neighbors, the dinner comes out of cans, and the servants--sensing an abdication--are insultingly incompetent.

It is the blacks-on-the-rise who provide the cruel counterpoint of white degeneration. The "boy" leaves for a job in the post office, a motorscooter, and a sharp suit of store clothes on credit; the kitchen "girl," brooding on mail-order creams to lighten the skin and straighten the hair, achieves status and pregnancy by sleeping with the white "bass." On this level, integration makes a mess of both races. Archie Ferris expresses liberal sentiments toward the blacks; in practice, his enlightened principles are expressed by going on a three-day drunk with his ex-servant, who rides off with a hangover --and the chandelier. Thus Novelist Mclntosh points up his pessimistic theorem about the future of Africa. The blacks will inherit nothing of value from association with the whites, who will themselves be corrupted.

Desert of Failure. The terrain itself is the real villain of the novel. The "territory" is a dreadful place of waterless rivers where turtles encrust a rock like scabs, and the "so-oopwha wind" reddens the sky with sandstorms. The only hope for anyone in such a place is to get away from it. Feebly, Ferris' daughter tries to escape, but, though beautiful, she is dim-witted and can't pass the exams that might get her a city job. The place is too much for her; the jackals and the thorn trees have won, she wails. Novelist Mclntosh provides a merciful if not happy ending for the girl, but it is one that is not so credible as his palpably evoked desert of failure that withers her life.

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