Norman Rush - Whites

She declared silence. Slow moments passed.

He stirred. His lips stirred. He got up and began pacing.

He said, “You’re right.” Then for a long time he said nothing, still pacing.

“You read my mind!” he said. “Last night I had an experience … I still … it’s still upsetting. I shouldn’t have come, I guess.”

She felt sorry for him. He had just the slightest speech defect, which showed up in noticeable hesitations. This was sad.

“Please tell me about it,” she said perfectly.

He paced more, then halted near the candle and stared at it.

“I hardly drink,” he said. “Last night was an exception. Phoning home to Vancouver started it, domestic nonsense. I won’t go into that. They don’t understand. No point in going into it. I went out. I went drinking. One of the hotel bars, where Africans go. I began drinking. I was drinking and buying drinks for some of the locals. I drank quite a bit.

“All right. These fellows are clever. Bit by bit I am being taken over by one, this one fellow, George. I can’t explain it. I didn’t like him. He took me over. That is, I notice I’m paying for drinks but this fellow’s passing them on to whomever he chooses, his friends. But I’m buying. But I have no say.

“We’re in a corner booth. It’s dark and loud, as usual. This fellow, his head was shaved, he was strong-looking. He spoke good English, though. Originally, I’d liked talking to him, I think. They flatter you. He was a combination of rough and smooth. Now he was working me. He was a refugee from South Africa, that always starts up your sympathy. Terrible breath, though. I was getting a feeling of something being off about the ratio between the number of drinks and what I was laying out. I think he was taking something in transit.

“I wanted to do the buying. I took exception. All right. Remember that they have me wedged in. That was stupid, but I was, I allowed it. Then I said I was going to stop buying. George didn’t like it. This man had a following. I realized they were forming a cordon, blocking us in. Gradually it got nasty. Why wouldn’t I keep buying drinks, didn’t I have money, what was my job, didn’t the Ministry pay expatriates enough to buy a few drinks? — so on ad nauseam.”

His color was coming back. He picked up a cocktail napkin and touched at his forehead.

He was looking straight at her now. He said, “You don’t know what the African bars are like. Pandemonium. I was sealed off. As I say, his friends were all around.

“Then it was all about apartheid. I said I was Canadian. Then it was about Canada the lackey of America the supporter of apartheid. I’m not political. I was scared. All right. When I tell him I’m really through buying drinks he asks me how much money have I got left, exactly. I tell him again that I’m through buying drinks. He says not to worry, he’ll sell me something instead. All right. I knew I was down to about ten pula. And I had dug in on buying drinks, the way you will when you’ve had a few too many. No more buying drinks, that was decided. But he was determined to get my money, I could damned well see that.

“He said he would sell me something I’d be very glad to know. Information. All right. So then comes a long run-around on what kind of information. Remember that he’s pretty well three sheets to the wind himself. It was information I would be glad to have as a doctor, he said.

“Well, the upshot here was that this is what I proposed, so as not to seem totally stupid and taken. I would put all my money down on the table in front of me. I took out my wallet and made sure he could see that what I put down was all of it, about ten pula, change and everything. All right. And I would keep the money under the palm of my hand. And he would whisper the information to me and if I thought it was a fair trade I would just lift my hand. Of course, this was all just face-saving on my part so as not to just hand over my money to a thug. And don’t think I wasn’t well aware it might be a good idea at this stage of things to be seen getting rid of any cash I had, just to avoid being knocked down on the way to my car.”

“This is a wonderful story,” she said spontaneously, immediately regretting it.

“It isn’t a story,” he said.

“You know what I mean,” she said. “I mean, since I see you standing here safe and sound I can assume the ending isn’t a tragedy. But please continue. Really.”

“In any event. There we are. There was more back and forth over what kind of information this was. Finally he says it’s not only something a doctor would be glad of. He is going to tell me the secret of how they are going to make the revolution in South Africa, a secret plan. An actual plan.

“God knows I have no brief for white South Africans. I know a few professionally, doctors. Medicine down there is basically about up to 1950, in my opinion, despite all this veneer of the heart transplants. But the doctors I know seem to be decent. Some of them hate the system and will say so.

“I go along. Empty my wallet, cover the money with my hand.

“Here’s what he says. They had a sure way to drive out the whites. It was a new plan and was sure to succeed. It would succeed because they, meaning the blacks, could bring it about with only a handful of men. He said that the Boers had won for all time if the revolution meant waiting for small groups to grow into bands and then into units, battalions and so on, into armies that would fight the Boers. The Boers were too intelligent and had too much power. They had corrupted too many of the blacks. The blacks were divided. There were too many spies for the Boers among them. The plan he would tell me would take less than a hundred men.

“Then he asked me, if he could tell me such a plan would it be worth the ten pula. Would I agree that it would? I said yes.”

“This is extraordinary!” she said. Duhamel! she thought, triumphant. The name had come back to her: Georges Duhamel . She could almost see the print. She was so grateful.

“Exciting!” she said, gratitude in her voice.

He was sweating. “Well, this is what he says. He leans over, whispers. The plan is simple. The plan is to assemble a shock force, he called it. Black people who are willing to give their lives. And this is all they do: they kill doctors . That’s it! They start off with a large first wave, before the government can do anything to protect doctors. They simply kill doctors, as many as they can. They kill them at home, in their offices, in hospitals, in the street. You can get the name of every doctor in South Africa through the phone book. Whites need doctors, without doctors they think they are already dying, he says. Blacks in South Africa have no doctors to speak of anyway, especially in the homelands where they are all being herded to die in droves. Blacks are dying of the system every day regardless, he says. But whites would scream. They would rush like cattle to the airports, screaming. They would stream out of the country. The planes from Smuts would be jammed full. After the first strike, you would continue, taking them by ones and twos. The doctors would leave, the ones who were still alive. No new ones would come, not even Indians. He said it was like taking away water from people in a desert. The government would capitulate. That was the plan.

“I lifted my hand and let him take the money. He said I was paying the soldiery, and he thanked me in the name of the revolution. Then I was free to go.”

He looked around dazedly for something, she wasn’t clear what. Her glass was still one third full. Remarkably, he picked it up and drained it, eating the remnants of ice.

She stood up. She was content. The story was a brilliant thing, a gem.