The Quarry Alan Paton Alan Paton (1903-1988) Alan Paton [pa'tan] was one of South Africa's first writ-ers to bring the tragedy of his na-tion's racial poli-cies to the world's attention. An inter-nationally celebrated author, Paton might easily have settled abroad and lived in comfort. Instead he chose to remain in his troubled homeland and struggle to bring about social change. Born in what is now the South Afri-can province of Natal, Paton worked as the principal of a boys' reformatory. His bold innovations at the reform school reflected his sympathy for the problems of young people, sympathies that are also apparent in his fiction.While visiting prisons in Europe and the United States, Paton wrote his novel Cry, the Beloved Country, his most fa-mous attack on his government's racial policies. At home he helped found and later led the Liberal Party of South Af-rica, which sought to win voting rights for the nation's nonwhite majority. Even after the party was banned in 1968, for reform. When he died, he was mourned not only as a fine writer but as a champion of human rights Located at the southern tip of the African continent, South Africa is a nation of vast mineral resources. In addition to its famous diamond deposits and gold mines, South Africa has many quarries from which stones such as limestone are cut. "The Quarry" takes place at an abandoned quarry in eastern South Africa, in a coastal city that borders the In-dian Ocean. The inhabitants of eastern South Africa include whites of English and Dutch descent, blacks mainly of Zulu descent, and Asians whose families emigrated from India in the late nineteenth century. Both blacks and Asians have suffered under the South African government's policy of apartheid [3 par'tid], or racial separation. Alan Paton was among the liberal whites who joined with blacks and Asians to protest South Africa's apartheid laws. Behind the suspenseful plot of "The Quarry" is a quiet plea for racial understanding.   The Quarry Alan Paton Everywhere the city was driving back nature, to the south and the west and the north. Only the east was safe, for there lay the ocean. Sky-scrapers stood on the places where elephants had crashed through the forest. Hippopotamus Pool was a city square full of the smells of buses, Lions' River ran down a straight concrete chan-nel into the Bay. Only Mitchell's Quarry had resisted the march of the city. It was a stony scar cut out of the side of Pigeon Hill, and though it was ugly it was a piece of nature. The large green pigeons had long since gone, but small birds and animals still clung to it, and lived in the trees and grass that ran down each side of the scar. Frogs and very small fish lived in the pools. Children were attracted there, for it was the only bit of wild-ness in the city. It was Johnny Day's favorite place. Some-times he sat by the pools for hours, watching the fish. Sometimes he climbed up through the trees, and sat on the very edge of the quarry, in the cool exciting wind from the dancing ocean. He more than once wondered whether anyone could climb down, but Tom Hesketh, who was sixteen and very manly, told him it was impossi-ble, and had never been done, and never would be done unless one came down on a rope. One could climb up from the bottom and Tom had done it once with two of his friends. "Which way did you take, Tom?" "I'm not telling you," said Tom, "it's not for kids. Can't you see the notice?" The notice said, no climbing, by order, only whose order it was, no one knew. "And I'm not doing it again," said Tom, "be-cause when I was halfway up, all I wanted to do was to come down again, and I couldn't."     Sitting by one of the pools, Johnny looked at the quarry face, wondering which way Tom had taken. All he knew was that Tom had begun by the noticeboard no climbing, by order, and that is where he would begin too, on the day after Christmas Day. He would climb in a direction half-right, where it seemed there was a track of footholds made for just such a purpose. Halfway up the quarry face the track seemed to peter out, but another track bearing half-left could be seen some feet higher. All that he must do was to find the way from one to the other. On the morning of the day after Christmas Day Johnny arrived at the quarry and found no-body there. Confident of success he took off his jacket and cap, and laid them on a stone under the noticeboard. He was wearing sandshoes, because that was what Tom Hesketh had worn. He looked up at the quarry face, which was roughly a perpendicular plane. He placed his right foot in a niche that seemed to have been made for it. He drew his left foot up and now stood about a foot above the level floor and the pools. The climb had begun, and the feeling of the climber was not nervousness but pure ambi-tion, strong in one so young, for he was only twelve. It certainly seemed that the track had been cut deliberately, perhaps to enable the quarry workers to climb the face. There was always a place for the foot, and the rock face inclined away from him a few degrees from the perpen-dicular, so that he had a feeling of security. There was no need so far for skill or ingenuity, for the method was simple—a hold with the hands, right foot up, left foot up, an inching for-ward on the same small ledge if possible, a searching for another hold with the hands and another small ledge for the right foot. He was about twenty feet up, and could see that he could return safely, if it was necessary. He looked down, and this gave him a feeling of ex-hilaration. He looked up, but decided not to do it again, because it seemed to reveal his own insignificance against the vast wall of the quarry, and above that the vast emptiness of the sky. From now on he would confine his attention to the handhold, the foothold and the rock face that so obligingly allowed him to lean against it. The track continued as before for a short dis-tance and he was at a height of about thirty feet when he reached a place where the rock face became suddenly perpendicular for a length of some three feet, so that he would not be able to lean against it. He wondered if he could take a step direct from safety to safety, but knew that the step would be too big for him. His only hope was a good hold for hands and feet. He was the slightest bit nervous, because he knew some-thing else too, that if he decided to take the next two steps it would be twice as hard to return. Tom Hesketh had said to him, "If you're frightened to take the next step, don't take it, just climb down, if you can. If you can't climb down, then you've got to take the next step, that's all. And I can tell you, kid, it's dangerous getting frightened up there." Well, he might be a bit nervous but he wasn't climbing down. He could see the trail clearly, and it looked easy except for this one next step. There was a place for the hands and a place for the right foot, just as good as any he had used so far. Someone shouted at him from below. It was a big Indian1 man who was shouting with some Indian boys. "Come down, sonny," shouted the big Indian man. Johnny shook his head. Without looking he pointed at the sky. The big Indian man shook his head too. "No, no," he shouted. "It's too dangerous, sonny. Come down." Again Johnny shook his head, and pointed up. The Indian man tried warnings. "Last year," he shouted, "an Indian boy was killed here. He was climbing the same way you are climbing now." This wasn't true. There never had been such an Indian boy, but the In-dian man believed that if the end was good, one shouldn't worry too much about the means. When the warnings failed, he invoked divine aid. "God sent me here," he shouted, "to tell you to come down. He is telling you now to come down. He does not mean for you to be up there. If you don't come down, He will be plenty angry." He added a clever afterthought. "Just like He was angry with that Indian boy." "Don't let anything take your mind off your hands and feet," said Tom, "or off the rock face. Don't think of the height, or of the spectators. Don't look at birds or ships on the sea. Just think of the climb." That is what Johnny did. To the despair of the big Indian man, and the admiration of the Indian boys, he addressed himself to the task of finding a place for his right hand and a place for his right foot, and when he had found them, he took the dangerous step. It was done. The ledge was generous, and he brought up his left foot. Tom's instruction was immediately forgotten, and he looked down at the growing crowd of Indian men and women and boys and girls, and African men from the factory near the quarry. The big Indian man shouted at him again to come down, and it was this very shouting that brought Tom's instruction back to Johnny's mind, so that the louder and more desperate the warnings and the threats, the less he paid atten-tion to them. He took his next step with confi-dence, and the trail before him was now straightforward and easy for at least seven steps. Then it stopped dead. He braced himself to look up, and there, about ten or twelve feet above him, he could see the second trail that ran half-left, and would take him to the top. He could see almost at once that he could go no further in a half-right direction, that he would have to climb straight up. He could also see toeholds for the first five feet, for that was his own height. It would all depend whether there were hand-holds also, and that he would have to tell by feeling for them, partly because he was appre-hensive about looking up, and partly because the rock face seemed to be nearer the perpen-dicular when one thought of climbing it perpen-dicularly. These thoughts and speculations took him some minutes, so that the crowd below knew that he was facing some kind of crisis. He was nearly fifty feet up, about one-third of the height of the quarry face. There were now a hundred people watching him, talking to each other, but not loudly, because they were subdued by con-templation of the dangers that lay ahead. The boys were filled with admiration and awe, and the women with tender feeling and care. It was a white boy, it is true, but there in the danger and excitement of his journey up the quarry face he had become one of their own. The boys wished him luck and the women shook their heads, unable to be indifferent to either his naughtiness or his plight. Johnny lifted his right foot to make the first step of the ascent, and this action put the big Indian man into a panic. "Sonny," he cried, "true's God, don't go up any more. You'll die, sonny, and no one here wants you to die. Sonny, I ask you to come down." He went down on his knees on the quarry floor, and said, "I pray God to make you come down. I pray God not to be angry with you." The women there, both Indian and Afri-can, seeing him kneeling there, cried out, "Shame," but not because they thought his action was shameful; they were merely saying how sad the whole thing was. The Indian man was now struck by a new idea, and he shouted, "Sonny, what's your ad-dress?" Johnny heard him but he tried to pay no attention, needing it all for the dangerous piece ahead. However, the question disturbed him slightly, and he brought his right foot down again, causing the crowd to give a composite groan, with many meanings. The Indian man took it as a reprieve, and shouted, "Sonny, I pray to God, give me your address." It was now clear to all but his would-be res-cuer that the small boy intended to continue the climb. His small exploratory movements showed that he meant to go up, not down. Again he placed his right foot, but this time he pulled himself up, causing the Indian man to rise from his knees and to collapse groaning on to a rock with his hands covering his eyes. So was si-lenced his vocal opposition to the climb, but the rest were quiet too, speaking in low voices, even whispers, as Johnny placed his hands and his foot, and pulled himself up, two feet now above the safety of the sloping trail. Then again the hands exploring, the right foot testing, the body bracing, the small boy like a fly on a cinema screen, except that he was no intruder, rather the creator of a drama never before witnessed in this city, of a crowd of everv color and class andtongue, bound all of them together for these moments by unbreakable bonds, to a small white boy climbing a quarry face made of a stone that knew nothing of admiration or anxiety or pity. And again a step, and again the low talking, and again the exploring hands and the testing foot, and again the bracing of the body. And down below silence, and silent prayers, and silent ap-prehension. The Indian man took his hands from his eyes, and watched despairingly; it was clear he was in an agony of care and pity over this child of an alien race, many of whose members had shown neither care nor pity for himself or his people. And up above again the winning of another step, again the murmur from below, from a crowd growing every moment, swollen by people streaming over the waste ground be-tween the quarry and the tarred road. There they stood, shoulder to shoulder, ruler and ruled, richer and poorer, white and black and yellow and brown, with their eyes fixed on a small piece of whiteness halfway up the quarry-face, and those of them who knew a thing or two knew that the boy was in a position of consider-able danger. Fortunately Johnny himself did not know it. He was surprised that his right hand searching above his head had found another generous ledge, at least nine inches wide. Once he had reached it, he would be able to rest, even per-haps to look upward to plan the last piece of climbing that would enable him to reach the half-left trail. Therefore he set out to reach it, alternately terrifying and gratifying the watching crowd below. The crowd did not realize the achievement when at last Johnny's feet were both planted on the nine-inch ledge. He himself decided not only to rest, but to allow his attention to be diverted from the climb. The ledge was so wide that he could turn himself about for the first time, stand with his back to the quarry face, and look down on the hundreds of people below. Some of them clapped and cheered him, some of them looked at him out of troubled eyes. The big Indian man stood up from the rock onto which he had col-lapsed, and called out, in a less assured voice than hitherto, for the small boy to come down, but after another man had spoken quietly to him, he desisted and it was generally understood that the second man had told him that the small boy had reached a point of no return, and it were better to leave him alone, and to pray rather for his salvation. For three minutes, four minutes, it must have been, Johnny stood with his back to the quarry face. After acknowledging the crowd's cheers, he had cut them off from attention, and stood there reassembling his small boy's powers. Everything was silent when again he turned his face to the quarry wall. The foothold was there, the handhold for the left hand was there, but of handhold for the right hand there was no sign whatsoever. At first he could not believe it, but when he tried again he knew there was no doubt of it. Had the handhold been perpendicularly above the toehold he might have done it, but it was at least a foot to the left of his body line. No one could pull himself up from such a position. A growl went up from the crowd, of defeat and frustration, and from the more knowledge-able, of sharpened anxiety. Again the questing hands, again the finding of nothing. The small boy, leaving his two arms in this upstretched position, but his face to the face of the quarry, almost as if he were weeping or praying, which indeed is what some thought he was doing. He brought down his arms and caused the crowd to groan and shudder as his left foot explored the rock below him, trying to find the foothold he had used to reach the ledge. In complete silence they watched him put his foot on it, but after a moment he withdrew and again laid his face against the face of the quarry. It was then clear that his ambition to climb had gone, and in its place was the frightenedness of a small boy. Again he turned himself round so that he faced the crowd, who could see clearly his loneliness and despair. His movements, so splendidly co-ordinated until now, gave alarming signs of randomness, and for one terrible moment it seemed that he might panic and fall. This was the signal for a young African man of about twenty to take charge. "Hi, sonny," he shouted, waving with out-stretched arm to the small boy, "don't be fright-ened. Thomas Ndhlovu2 is coming." On his way to the starting-point by the noticeboard, Thomas spoke to a white man who seemed to be senior to the others. "Get the police, master, or the fire brigade. I go up to stay with the small boy." Then he started his climb, amid a new noise of laughs, cheers, approval, and advice. Thomas soon showed himself to be vigorous and un-skilled, and his friends below, who had been so anxious about the first climber, made jokes about the second. As for Thomas himself, when-ever he had brought off what he thought a piece of good climbing, he would turn to the crowd and raise his clenched fist, to be greeted by cheers and laughter. Every few steps he would shout at the small boy, urging him to be of good heart, because one Thomas Ndhlovu was com-ing. The small boy himself had recovered from his panic and watched absorbedly the progress of his savior. What had been a tense and terrify-ing affair had become a kind of festival. Jests and laughter had replaced groans and sighs, and Thomas, with intention somewhat foolish, climbed flamboyantly and wildly, shouting en-couragement in English to the small boy and exchanging banter in Zulu3 with his friends on the ground. It was only when he reached the end of the first trail and began to inspect the sharp perpendicular ascent that the crowd again fell silent. Thomas however would not tolerate this new respect. Turning round he shouted some-thing at his friends that caused much laughter. He too made the exploratory motions of hands and it was very clear that he was caricaturing the small boy's motions. Nevertheless the laugh-ter died away as he began the ascent and the atmosphere was tense, without being fearful. When at last he placed his foot on the nine-inch ledge, rulers and ruled, richer and poorer, joined in an ovation of shouting and clapping, which was doubled and redoubled when he too turned to face the crowd. He smiled down at the small white boy and put his hand on his shoul-der, as if to assure him that no one fell from a ledge when Thomas Ndhlovu was on it. "Now be quiet," he said, "some time the po-lice come, and the fire brigade, and you go home to your mother." The small boy said, "Thanks a million," and Thomas said, "What your mother say?" "I won't tell my mother," said Johnny. Thomas laughed uproariously, and pointed at the crowd below, where newspapermen were taking photographs and interviewing spectators. "Tomorrow," said Thomas, "big picture in paper, you and me. Your mother open paper, she say, what you doing there with that native boy?" He thought this very funny, and for a time occupied himself with it. Then he asked, "What's your name, sonny?" "Johnny Day." "Johnny Day, eh? Very good name. My name Thomas Ndhlovu." "Very good name too," said Johnny. "Police coming," said Thomas pointing. "When police coming other times, Thomas run-ning. Now police coming, Thomas staying." The arrival of the police was greeted with great good humor, for here was an occasion on which their arrival was welcome. Words in Zulu were shouted at them, compliments tinged with satire, for the crowd was feeling happy and free. The policemen grasped the whole situation immediately. Two of them, armed with ropes, set off up through the trees that grew at the side of the quarry and in a few minutes had reached the upper edge, where they took up a position directly above the man and the boy. Instructions were shouted and a rope was lowered to Thomas, who, once he had the cradle-like end in his hand, laughed with uproarious delight. To the end of this rope was attached another which Thomas threw to the policemen below. More instructions were shouted and Thomas soon had the small boy in the cradle. The policemen above lowered the cradle down the quarry wall. The policemen below held it away from the stony face. In one minute Johnny was on the quarry floor, lost to sight in a swirling multi-colored mass, shouting their joy and congratula-tion. This celebration was still in progress as Thomas Ndhlovu landed on the quarry floor, when it transferred itself to him. Everybody, white, yellow, brown, black, wanted to shake hands with him, to thank him for his splendid act, to ask God to bless him. The Indian man, now fully restored, was one of the most enthusi-astic of these participators. "Come, sonny," said the senior white man. "Tell me where you live and I'll take you home." "I must thank Thomas first," said Johnny. The senior white man looked at the tumultu-ous scene. "How are you going to do that?" he said. "I'll wait," said Johnny. But he did not need to wait. The policemen cleared a way through the mob of con-gratulators, and there, under the eyes of author-ity, Johnny Day put out his hand and thanked Thomas Ndhlovu again for the act which, for all we know, saved his life. This second evidence of gratitude was extremely pleasurable to Thomas and, moved to great heights by it, he led the small white boy to the noticeboard which said, no climbing, by order. What he said, no one heard, for it was lost in an outburst of catcalls, laughter, jeering and cheering.