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Authors: Nadine Gordimer

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There were also internal problems. Sonny brought them all home—to Hannah, that is. Hannah understood the inferences behind the positions various individuals took; he and she argued over and unravelled them together. Comrades who were united in a line of thought sometimes apparently unaccountably diverged. Someone whom Sonny had been sure of:—He didn't back down, he just sidled away.—The question was of alliances; he and Hannah were sitting outside her cottage in the
garden, which they had to themselves because the people who lived in the main house were overseas.—I can't agree we should ‘take each case on its merits' until we've decided exactly what are the minimum areas of policy agreement necessary before a group should be accepted.—Sonny's distended nostrils were his familiar sign of tension.—Only when we confront these people with that can we judge whether they're coming in with a genuine commitment or with the intention of influencing our objectives in some way. All smiles, and the next thing you've got a palace revolution. That's the problem with a broad alliance—which we want, which we pursue, we must have—each organization has the right to work in its own way, but that doesn't mean a licence to creep in and subvert. It's been used for that before, it'll be tried again. We can't have it. Can't risk it.—
Her soft breasts rose and fell in the low-necked dress she wore to enjoy the sun, a water-colour wash coloured her blonde skin, but he was staring for her response and did not see her. —I think that may be an exaggeration. It's not as if this lot represents any great constituency. To attempt anything like that, they'd have to have strong support on the executive, they'd have to have people with influence—people among you—
—But that's exactly what worries me. Why does someone on the executive with whom I've discussed the whole matter in principle, again and again, before the actual situation came up—and we had exactly the same point of view—why today does he say nothing?—
—He's changed his mind. Doesn't necessarily mean someone's changed it for him.—
—Yes it does. Because we've always been so open—you know—between us, it would be natural for him to tell me he'd changed his mind. Say why, discuss it.—
She sat up straight and picked ants off his sleeve.—Who was it he was along with?—
—A couple of people he hasn't been particularly enthusiastic about before. If you can call it ‘with'; as I say, he gave himself away by saying nothing. I suppose it amounted to being with them.—
—You'd better take off your shirt. Ants all over you; look.—He held up his arms and she helped him out of the sleeves. While she shook and slapped at the shirt he ran his hand back and forth in the hair on his breast, turned in upon himself.
—Here, my love.—But he did not take the shirt from her and she sat down with it in her lap.—You don't want to say what you're thinking.—
—No I don't. But he's ambitious …I've told you that before. Oh in the right way, I meant; he believes he could be used more effectively, he thinks he knows better how to deal with some of the forces against us. He feels he's the one who understands big business. And he knows the mentality of the Afrikaners … But he'd like to be in the papers more often … You know?—She laughed at his reluctant realization of this.—If he could gather supporters, a faction around him, he might just feel justified in pushing somebody else out, at the top—
She continued for him:—And maybe there's a way to do it.—
—But what a way! This is the crowd who wanted to put up candidates for the regional council elections, eh. We had to work to persuade them to call it off.—
—Are you going to talk to him?—
—I don't want to before I've talked to others …if there are others … flush them out.—
—Be careful. No palace revolution, but no witch-hunt. Certainly not led by you.—
On these days when they talked like this in a garden, there not by right but by calculation of someone else's absence, as if theirs was a clandestine meeting of the other kind he so often attended, there was no love-making. Now while Hannah went on, speaking his thoughts as well as her own, in her private, perceptive way, his sense of where he was underwent a strange intensity. It was physical. He became aware on the very surface of his skin, his bare breast and arms, as well as through sight and smell, of this that was called ‘the garden' hovering and pressing in upon him. The shadowless mauve of the jacaranda full-blown, ectoplasmic, near his face, tree ferns airing green wings spread over the pond tiled with lily leaves, the mist of live warmth from cut grass. A tingling peace on his nerve-endings, in his ears, murmured over by some sort of birds with grey tails rustling in a fig tree. As he sat with Hannah, the blurred rush of the chronology of living was halted for a while. The absolute of existence: an alpine pine hatched against failing light above the darkening earth, the bright tiny moths of the first stars flitting out of the hazy radiance of the sky. Clouds obscuring like shadows; the northern tree shivering at the tips of feathered branches as the heat waves of the day rose. The red-polished stoep and the rotting wooden windows, the room there, with the bed, the chaotic, disintegrated forms of the painting—all was stayed, as before a hand held up. Over the moment he sees the foreign tree, the element like himself that doesn't belong, fall majestically, following its giant shadow that is falling across the man and woman in this garden, now. Where the saw has razed through its stout trunk the rings of its years are revealed under a powdering of sawdust.
What was sensuously close drew suddenly away; he was
removed from it and the isolation of his presence offered its meaning. A rich white man's domain of quiet and beauty screened by green from screams of fear and chants of rage, from the filth of scrap-heap settlements and the smashed symmetry of shot bodies; he had no part in it. He did not know what he was doing there.
He pulled himself out of the chair and went into the cottage; to that one room.
Now there are things he doesn't know. I wasn't snooping, this time. I was alone in the house and I heard one of the women who come from the farms hawking mealies in the street. Her call hollowed my stomach; as kids, mealies were one of our favourite treats, my sister and I loved any hand-held food you could eat while you played. I heard that old cry GRE—EE—NN MEA-LIES right through the reggae beat of UB-40 on my cassette player, and I ran out to catch the woman before the cry became too distant. She swung the sack down from her head; everything about her was stockily foreshortened to carry weight —bare chunky feet, thick body, pediment neck, face and skull broadened for burdens. How black they always were, these women; black blackened by labour in the sun, it's as if nature, which supplied our founding parents with the right degree of pigment to inhabit this continent, also supplies them with the camouflage under which to appear to submit to slavery. If you're mixed you don't have the protection. She strips the green leaves and spills the floss back from the cobs, digging her earth-rimmed
nail to spurt milk from a row of nubs, because I ask her for young mealies, and her black face has no recognition for me, my half-blackness and this half-white man's street we live in as one of my father's political acts. She doesn't know I have anything to do with her. So much for his solidarity with the people.
And then I found I didn't have enough money in my pocket to pay her. She smells the same, of the grease smeared on her red-black cheeks and the smoke of wood-fires in her clothes, but mealies have gone up in price since the days in Benoni-son-of-sorrow. One of our Afrikaans neighbours had come out to buy, as well, and she intervened to pay for me—Ag now, don't worry, you can give me back later, it's nothing—once you get one of them round to making an exception of you, there's no limit to their neighbourliness. My mother's dignity and beauty make our family an exception, although my father says exceptions change nothing, they merely confirm mob racism. For him, we are in this street to challenge the general.
I ran back to the house to look for my mother's store of small change, as my sister and I used to do. But there was no jamjar on the kitchen shelf. She was at work and would have her handbag with her; I thought there might be another purse or loose money in her dressing-table drawers. I know my mother; her sort of innocent, easily-found ‘safe places' for things. Under the plastic tray where her cosmetics are ranged was a five-rand note and an envelope printed with the logo of a passport-photograph vending machine.
I ran, again, to the black woman seated with indifferent patience under the blanket-skirt and the young Afrikaner wife, legs strutted wide on high heels, arms crossed under her breasts, smiling at me as if I were an athlete racing for the tape. She was another pink-and-yellow one. But not emancipated, like
the other, not a prison visitor or a lover. She greeted me with a little sharp twist of the smile in the direction of the mealie vendor.—They just charging whatever they think you'll pay. I've told her, not fifty cents each, forty cents. So no, wait, that's too much—you only owe one-twenty.—
My father's passport (he went overseas to a conference in Germany before he was detained) has been withdrawn, Baby left illegally, I've never had one. Neither has my mother. I went back into their bedroom to find what she had placed under her cosmetic tray. Photographs are not like letters, anyone may look at them. There were six. There she was, her neck held as you do when seated upright in the booth as the flash comes. The slightly defiant embarrassment with which exposure is met, because you never know for whom, in the world, your image is meant. Hair smoothed a moment before; wearing her seed pearls.
Where is she going? Is she going to leave him? Wild idea …my mother! Where is there for her to go. There's an accountant cousin who emigrated to Toronto a few years ago, at the Saturday tea-parties there's news of him doing well.
So I know nothing about her. Like him, I don't know the invasion of unhappiness in her; the devastation left by him and his daughter.
I don't have a photograph of my mother. If I took one of these, would she miss it?
 
 
Aila has her passport. She told her husband only after it had been granted and issued.
He had the curious impression that she must have mentioned, indicated, her intention. A torn-off strip of paper buried in a pile of problems documented in his mind; the new series of bans imposed on his comrades had brought a crisis and reshuffle of responsibilities.
There was a moment's pause. His wife evidently decided—they both decided without a glance—to accept the lapse as genuine. Her taking the necessary steps for application with the absolute minimum of reference to him was what he would have advised; it was as if she had acted upon this. Aila was in the clear, innocent. She had done nothing beyond visiting him in prison as his wife and keeping a carryall packed with toiletries against his re-detention. But of course there was guilt by association, by loyalty. Aila had to show she was not involved; a stay-at-home wife. The affectionate diminutive by which she knew her only girlhood sweetheart, the chummy appellation by which crowds knew him—the police files'
alias Sonny
—did not have to be filled in between first and surname on forms requiring name of husband. Aila's best chance of getting a passport was to distance herself from him, his record, his activities, his life.
A stay-at-home wife—and mother. There was the question of Baby, as well. The Security Police surely knew about Baby; but maybe not, the illegal movements of young people presumed to be erratic and adventurous could pass unnoticed until and unless someone was picked up and gave out names under interrogation.
Sonny knew where Aila would go.—And a visa?—He spoke almost humbly.
She had one; everything was arranged through a lawyer both knew well. Lawyers have the habit of discretion sometimes to the point of absurdity or unintentional slight; he saw the man frequently, he was a close adviser to the trade unions, and there had been no mention of a passport for Aila. Well, the lawyer, too, had other things on his mind. Anyway, it was necessary to feel assured Aila had been in good hands.
As Baby's mother and father, they discussed money.—I thought I'd take some clothes. I'm making warm things—they say it gets quite chilly there in winter.—Yes, lately the sewing-machine
had to be put aside when the table was used for meals, he'd noticed, without attaching any significance to Aila's preoccupation. —She'll always need money. Wherever you are—(he stopped himself from citing his prison experience, the inference would be alarming to Aila).—You don't know the value of money until you're in certain situations—He laughed, as an explanation, confession: he and Aila had begun their child's life in a situation where money was associated with greed.
He knew best in political matters; they had some small savings she would withdraw from the bank and take with her.
—How much is there, exactly?—
She fetched the savings booklet and they stood heads together reading the figures.—Oh, it's more than I thought. I'd forgotten about the interest.—Aila was smiling almost as she used to.
—You can't take all that. It'll exceed the exchange-control allowance, I'm sure. The allowance is smaller for neighbouring countries than for overseas.—
—How will they know? I'll take the notes in cash.—
—Aila …—He had gone back to excising articles from a newspaper, running a blade along columns.
—Somehow. I could.—
Impatience was something new in him; like the moustache he had grown to show he was someone else, now. This person still had responsibility for her, nevertheless.—Aila, for god's sake, you can't do things like that. D'you know what'll happen if you're caught out? Can you imagine yourself in prison? Go and see Baby and enjoy it. Forget what I said about money. Take the dresses and whatever. Those kinds of games are not for you.—
He turned pages of the paper without seeing them, then forced himself to read and began pressing the blade cleanly along a margin. His hand fumbled for a pen to mark the date;
she was still in the room, he knew it in spite of the silence—he thought of the special quality of her presence he used to sense when he would come into the house calling out her name. —You're so lucky you're going to see Baby.—
What was she doing—looking at him? Turned away? He would not lift his head and the blade sliced dryly through the fibres of newsprint, a faint domestic echo of the electric saws that destroyed the trees from which it was made; the pine tree … But his words were as feeble an echo of the surging envy he felt—of her option of distancing herself from the struggle, of the passport, of the right to go to the girl as the one who had been there to bandage her wrists.
—I know.—
Was that all? All to be expected of his wife when they were talking of their first child? Who could tolerate Aila's tranquil blamelessness!
He heard her double step, high heels touching the floor before the soles came lightly down, and thought she had left the room. But she had paused:—I wish you could go.—
With her? With Aila? On his own? In place of her? Aila never had much relish for journeys, she didn't know how to deal with officialdom, she had found it difficult even to speak in the presence of his warder.
Or she wished he had not done all he had done, all that she would not reproach him with ever, to the boy, to Baby, to her—so that it would not be only his lack of a passport, his commitment to political action that took away from him the right to be in her place.
 
 
Is it because of me?
Since my mother's been away he's been spending time at home. He even brought out the chess board. We've played
together a few evenings. But I'm careful. I don't know what he may be trying to get me into, now. I cook supper for us. Once I found the nerve to say something:—Haven't you got a meeting?—
He waited for a moment, showing me he knew, strictly between ourselves, my real question, and he replied to it. —No. No meeting. I'll be at home.—
At once I fetched my helmet and bike keys and put my head round the door.—Well, I'm off.—
He was playing that record he likes so much, some Mozart overture, he thinks he's only got to set up the scene and we'll do something educational together or watch soccer on the tele, dad and his boy. But he also knew I hadn't been going anywhere.
When I came home, late, the lights were still on. I thought he was waiting up for me and I went straight along the passage to my room. But there I became aware that there were voices, men's voices, in the house. They became more audible—their insistence, their cross-talk—as whoever it was must have left the sitting-room and been pausing in the entrance. There was the sound of the front door being closed and bolted by him, and the creaks and subdued clatter of his movements, tidying up, clicking off lights. He knocked at my door. After me again. I didn't say come in, I said, Yes?
He looked slowly round my room; I suppose it must be a year, more, since he's been in it. There was the beginning of a crinkling round his eyes, affirmation rather than recognition, at what I've kept, and he went over and stood a moment, head back, as if he were in an art gallery, not his son's bedroom, before a poster of a desert. That's new. Just space. I don't know what desert, where—I hoped he wasn't going to expect me to say.
He sat on the end of my bed and his weight tightened the
covers over my feet, I felt pinned down.—There was a meeting, after all. Here.—
My father has such a wonderful smile, all the planes of his face are so strongly defined, so encouraging, the open feelings sculptured so deep—no wonder he is attractive to crowds, and to women. My mother and the other. I resemble him but my face is a mask moulded from his and I only look out through it, I don't inhabit it as he does. I suddenly was alarmed that he was going to talk about her, his woman, about the cinema, yes, at last, the whole story, that's what he'd come into my room for, Baby was right, you can't live with them, you ought to get away from them.
I had to speak quickly.—I heard someone leave.—
—I know. It's unfortunate. Something turned up soon after you'd left. I was settling down to read, for once …when did I last finish a book. I get halfway through and by the time I can get back to it I've forgotten the first part. D'you get any reading done, Will?—
Everything we say to each other has a meaning other than what comes out. That's what makes it difficult to be in the house with him. Now he was admitting he doesn't know anything much about me except that I know about the woman, who she is, where she lives. He has no hand in enriching my life (as he would think of it) anymore. Although we couldn't be members of the library when we lived across the veld, I mustn't forget he bought children's books and read to us.
I didn't tell him that in the past year I've read almost everything in his bookcase. If he'd been interested enough, if he'd come into my room for any reason other than his own concerns (what was it now, the danger of confession was averted but there must be something else) he might have found his Gramsci or his Kafka among the clutter on my table. I opened my hand
towards Dornbusch and Fisher's
Macroeconomics,
on the reading list for my second-year courses.

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