Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

Harald and Claudia decided to go away. On holiday. It is awkward to admit this to Duncan, in the visitors’ room. He says, About time you took a break! How long is it?

But let’s avoid that; the last holiday was before, when there was a customary systole and diastole between work and reward. Many months have passed for him where he is and them outside.

To the Cape. — Didn’t you once go to L’Agulhas? Would it appeal to us, you think?—

— It’s the end of the continent — he says, in homage.

— Or maybe Hermanus. But we’d rather like to try somewhere new.—

Wherever it was that they did go, flew, took the car, the beckoning world was beautiful. He was in his cell and a wretched child covered his head with his arms as he slept in the streets of Cape Town beneath the eternal mountain that made you want to live, as it does, forever. What looked, from the perspective of a moving car, like the refuse dump of a city was a vast low surface of board, tin, plastic rags and people reduced to detritus under a sky gloriously feathered, a cosmic bird, cirrus gilded by light shining from billions of miles away. A splendid night shuddered thunder with lightning fleeing in all directions. The serene sea covered rotting ancient wrecks and present pollution alike with a sheen of lucent colour, and rested the breasts of gulls. You could have walked upon that water, no wonder Harald could believe it once happened.

Signals of life, from everything, in spité of everything. The plane’s shadow a great butterfly passing over green, and crops in ear, and lilac desert. From a window, valley lights at night fluttering to attract, attract. Claudia began to have the feeling that she and Harald were waiting for some signal, the signal that would move life on, take them out of the regression in which they had taken refuge, going through the motions, their echoing voices occupying what was emptied of meaning. She tried to think of this in practical terms: perhaps they should leave the townhouse complex as it really was already, void of their life there. Perhaps they should move house.

Could any team of professionals with their packing cases and vans make such a move; and wouldn’t it all, the stored possessions that were Duncan’s from that cottage along with everything else, be delivered, unloaded, surround Harald and her in the next habitation?

Motsamai made sure that the firm sent Duncan sections of their projects to design. He never saw the completed set of plans for which he was drawing certain vertical, horizontal and lateral projections, aspects from the North and South, East and West. But he thought sometimes how his own work was already achieved: the structure of this cell was his accomplishment, designed to the specifications of his life.

Harald and Claudia did not move. At the beginning of summer there was a call on the answerphone when Harald, as so often, came home to the townhouse before Claudia. The voice was at once familiar: the bass African accent and casual delivery of Khulu. How’re you folks doing? I’ve been meaning to come round. But you know how time goes, anyway I hear about you from Duncan.

Claudia did not want to return the call at that house. Harald understood: Baker might answer. He remembered the newspaper for which Khulu had said, in the talk he kept up when the three went to a café between sessions of the court, he did most of his reporting. Harald had his secretary call there several times but without success, and a message was left.

He/she. A summons on the security monitor, on a night when they were not expecting anyone. Claudia answered, this time. Khulu announced himself. When he reached their door, both were there to meet him, there was the keen sense of a pleasure deprived in not having sought him out months ago, themselves. His heavy arms went about each in turn. Animation filled the room, while Harald fetched drinks, and Khulu catted — Claudia, you got bread or something, some fruit, I’ve been out on a story, nothing in my stomach all day!—

Claudia had a young man for whom to put together a meal. She came back and forth with cold meat and cheese and chutney and bread, and Harald brought the fruit bowl. Khulu ate with inattentive zest while talking about the changes in ownership of newspapers with the acquisition of a group by blacks. He was proud of this; and sceptical about the advancement of his career that Claudia suggested it would mean for him; Harald lifted a hand in the gesture that came from his experience in matters of financial power, the rivalries which take place up there in board rooms when seats are vacated by one set of backsides and taken up by another. There was laughter at this uninhibited expression of understanding that the mood brought by this visitor made easy.

But Khulu was also a messenger. When he had pushed aside the plate of banana skins and turned in the chair with the beer glass in hand, he made his delivery.

— Duncan wants you to do something about the child. If it’s not his, it’s Carl’s. So Duncan—

Duncan has entered the room, the townhouse. The dog, sleeping beside Harald’s chair, might even get up to greet the empty doorway.

No-one speaks, and then Khulu takes a mouthful of beer. He shifts the bowl of fruit to make room for the glass. — So Duncan wants.—

He/she.

— What is it we could do.—

Harald remembers well — That girl won’t have anyone claim the child! What she said in court. It’s hers. —

— Duncan doesn’t agree.—

— What is it he wants — blood tests, Motsamai to start all that? And to what purpose? Prove the child is his and take it from the mother? Where to? To whom? If he succeeded, who’s going to take care of a child for seven years. Seven years old, five years perhaps, before he could.—

— I don’t think Duncan means that.—

— Then I don’t understand it at all. Where the whole idea comes from. Is he losing all sense of reality, shut away there. After all that’s happened to him, he’s gone through, to rake up this, drag another generation into it.—

— Harald, wait.—

— What can I say — I don’t think he means to take the kid from her. No way! Blood tests and all that. The kind of thing the Sunday press puts on the front page. You know Duncan is a thinker, he’s got his own idea about whatsit again, paternity. —

— Who knows whether the child is even born yet. Or whether there ever was a child. I’ve had patients with her kind of history who produce phantom pregnancies. Duncan may be distressing himself for nothing.—

— It’s here, it’s about a month old.—

Harald sits looking at Claudia until she says as if she already knows — What is it?—

— A boy.—

— So what do you think Duncan means. — Harald tries to force himself to think of this as a proposition to be put upon the table between the fruit bowl and the glass bleary with beer dregs. — Money?—

— Not so much that, but yes, babies need things, I suppose. Some sort of back-up for her, make sure she can take proper care of it.—

— We don’t even know where she is.—

— I know how to find her.—

Perhaps the girl is holed up somewhere with her baby, secret from the world, and she does not know that the men, Duncan and Khulu are after her; for Claudia, who has seen so many births, there was a moment of pure possession like that, for herself after giving birth, she had thought long forgotten. — Perhaps Duncan should leave her alone.—

The two men misunderstand Claudia; what they hear is embittered opposition to any money, back-up, contact, being provided for that girl and her doubtful progeny.

Khulu gently repeats the expression of Duncan’s will. — I know where to find her.—

In the family.