On a cold night, a group of men walks between two rows of trees in a lemon orchard. Overhead, the moon is hidden behind grey clouds; nothing can be heard except the distant sounds of crickets chirping and a dog briefly barking. The tart smell of lemons hangs in the air. A man holding a lantern walks ahead of the others, and another man carrying a loaded shotgun calls to him to slow down because it’s dark at the back of the group. Though this man walks at the rear of the party, he’s the leader.
Another of the men comments about the chilly weather, and the leader asks if this man is as cold as the “coloured” (multiracial) man walking ahead of them, using a racial slur to refer to him. The coloured man, whose hands are bound behind his back, shivers—he isn’t dressed in warm clothing like the others are. The men had only allowed him to put on pants and a raincoat over his pajamas when they woke him up and took him captive. The coloured man is both too afraid and too stubborn to respond when the man with the lantern mockingly asks if he’s cold.
Andries, the fifth man in the group, says that the coloured man is shivering with fear rather than cold. Both he and the man who commented about the cold are carrying whips. Andries then says that the coloured man is dumb, which makes the leader demand that they all stop and wait. He says that the coloured man isn’t dumb—rather, he’s a well-educated savage. The leader shoves his shotgun against the coloured man’s back and cocks back the hammer, demanding that the coloured man respond when a baas (“master”) speaks to him.
The man with the lantern nervously warns the leader not to shoot, since they don’t want to be liable for a murder. The leader questions what the man with the lantern means. Under the lanternlight, the leader’s face is dark red and so visibly pockmarked that it resembles a map covered with markings and topography. His blue eyes look like frozen water. He calls the coloured man a racial slur again and says that the man is a teacher at a school that the he and the others pay for. The leader reminds everyone that the coloured man disrespected a white minister at their church, which he won’t stand for.
The man with the lantern agrees with the leader, but he again cautions against murder. The leader retorts that he’ll shoot any non-white person (again using a racial slur) he wants in order to get respect. The leader shoves his gun into the coloured man’s back and demands to know if the coloured man heard him; Andries steps up, punches the coloured man, in the face and echoes the leader. The coloured man, stumbling to his feet, is afraid for his life. He answers “Yes, baas,” in a dignified yet derisive way, though the others don’t pick up on his tone.
After this, the group continues walking through the orchard. The leader says that the coloured man should have gone to court to dispute the whipping that the principal and the church leader gave him. Andries says that they’ll give him a whipping bad enough to teach him a lesson. The leader agrees—they’ll drive the coloured man away to the city where less dignified people live. They don’t want educated non-white people in their town. The sound of the dog barking in the distance interrupts the men, and the man with the lantern comments that it’s a good watchdog—he unsuccessfully tried to buy it from the farmer who owns it. He says that he’d take great care of it.
As the group keeps walking, the lemon trees rustle in the wind, a harsh sound that doesn’t seem to fit with how nice the fruit smells—the smell is stronger now, as though the lemons were being juiced. The air has gotten chillier, the crickets louder; the moon has appeared from behind the clouds to cast silvery light on the leaves. Finally, the man with the lantern points out a place to stop: a gap in the orchard, surrounded by trees, that resembles an amphitheater. The moonlight shines onto the sharp edges of the leaves and branches, lighting up the dew so that it looks like quicksilver.
