Nadine Gordimer - Loot and Other Stories

Her title was Assistant to the Administrator of the programmes for this country planned by experts in New York and Geneva according to their Mission Statement. Much of the application consisted of informing New York/Geneva tactfully as possible that the Agency’s plan for the country to enter globalisation couldn’t be achieved quite as visualised, and concealing how she and the Administrator were deviously, prudently finding out how to go about the process — not on their own well-trained theoretical model, but in the ways the Government itself best understood how the country might practise reforms and innovations according to the circumstances in which their constituents lived, often unimaginable in New York/Geneva, and the expectations, demands, prejudices, political rivalries within which Ministers thrashed about to keep their cabinet seats. This meant not only travel into the bush and up rivers to communities where the development plan saw the local school as being thrust into the new one world with information technology equipment — and where the Administrator and his Assistant found there was no electricity in the village — but also required attentive socialising with Ministers and their various Deputies, advisors, often unidentified figures attendant and clearly influential, who would pick up in mid-sentence some wandering statement by a Minister, clarifying it briskly. Who were these men — even a woman or two? How to approach them for inside facts, for warnings or encouragements about whom to seek out to breach a Minister’s generalisations, that slam of doors on undesirable realities.

She enjoyed field trips: she distrusted abstraction. — Then you’re working for the wrong outfit. — Her Administrator, a Canadian, taunted her; but they got on well, he had his wife and teenage son with him, the boy enrolled at a local school as evidence of the Administrator’s commitment to sharing the life of the local people wherever posted. As the bachelor woman (his wife dubbed her with mock envy), she was invited to drop in and share meals at their house where the same kind of resident tea-provider and floor-polisher had become a mate of the schoolboy, teaching him to play the guitar the traditional African way, and in turn being taught the latest pop music. In addition to the official gatherings and embassy parties, the Administrator’s house was where Government Ministers and officials, members of parliament, the capital’s dignitaries, judges, lawyers, businessmen, were entertained for what could be gleaned of use to the Agency’s mandate. Few brought their wives along; the female Minister of Welfare and two MPs were usually the only black women present, and they were strident in their interruptions of male discourse, as they had to be to distinguish them from the wives left at home. Roberta Blayne, the Administrator and his wife, Flora, had no particular sense of being white, in this company; all three had lived with black, yellow, all races in the course of their work around the world and accepted their own physical characteristic like that between eyes with or without the epithelioid fold, noses high-bridged or flat. They were also aware that they were not always accepted by the same token among all the eminent blacks present — it’s easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.

For the first few months neither Ministers nor their satellites addressed Roberta Blayne beyond the usual general greeting, which then began at least to include her name — not a difficult one to recall: somebody’s assistant, home-grown or imported, a genus there to be ignored. But as her Administrator, Mr Alan D. Henderson, often spoke in the plural ‘we’ and turned to her for her interpretation of points in an interview or observations on a field trip, the dignitaries began to recognize her as, if not one of the company of Minister of Welfare and MPs — her manner was not strident — part of a delegation, another honorary man. Her status was marked by observation that she drank whisky with the Ministers instead of the beer that was the expected choice of any entourage. A dinner-table companion might turn to her sometimes with the usual questions of obligatory interest — where did she come from? — English, of course? — what does she think of our country? — ever been in Africa — first time? — First time. India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan — but not here. — You see you are welcome, we Africans are friendly people, don’t you find. — There was a lawyer who was witty and forthright, making her Administrator and her laugh at themselves, with his anecdotes and mimicry of encounters with officials from aid agencies. — One thing you development fundis don’t know about is the new kind of joke you’ve inspired among us in the taverns. — The Administrator was equal to the banter. — It’s a good sign when you hear you’re the butt of humour, means you’re accepted.—

The lawyer, with lips everted expectantly in a grin, saw the Assistant was about to speak — As what? Part of the community? Or part of the scene playing between donor and beneficiary? —

— Ah, she’s right on, man! — The lawyer flung himself back in his chair delightedly. — Is it a sitcom, miniseries starring the IMF and World Bank—

The Administrator was enjoying himself. — Oh not your standard villains—

This sort of pleasant exchange struck up only after the tap on a glass signalled that the host, Minister or Chairman, was about to make a welcoming speech, and discussion of the latest announcements or ‘pending’ announcements (development topics had their own evasive lingua franca) on trade tariffs, bills coming before parliament for land reform, proceedings of Mercasur, SADEC, the EU, had been respectfully listened to or contested (the listeners asserting themselves to become the listened to) over the skill of eating and drinking without appearing to be aware of this lowly function.

It was only then that whatever everyone had been drinking released the individual from the official; the volume rose convivially. The Administrator’s Assistant felt a hand on her arm or met an assessing smile — not at all bad, this aid agency woman, the flush on the flesh where breasts lift it above her dress.

But there were not many such moments, she wasn’t bothered by men; and that was perhaps not flattering. Earlier assignments, other parts of the world, it had been rather different. The attitude she had learned to convey to keep undesirables at bay without offending (aid agency work implied diplomacy above all, personal feelings must be discounted in the philosophy of equal partnership between donor agency and the people of a recipient country): that defence was scarcely needed, here; not this time; not any more.

There was even a man — not sure what he was, Assistant to a Deputy-Minister or Director-General in some portfolio or other — who did not greet her when he was seated round a conference table; one of those in official positions who do not see unimportant people: a simple defect in vision. Which meant that she did not turn to the voice, thought it was someone else in the corridor who was being addressed, when this man was saying, as she recognised him drawn level with her — Will you come for a drink? — In a pause, he added her name — You are Miss Blayne. — As if confirming an identity.

— I’m sorry … I didn’t …—

They were being carried along by politely hurrying people, sticks caught in a river current. — Here’s the bar.—

She was so unprepared that she trotted along with the man like a schoolgirl summoned. He and his appendage were greeted with the special attention accorded by waiters and barmen indiscriminately to any face known to be in Government. He rejected one table-nook and was immediately directed to a choice of others; only the stools at the bar were occupied. She could not remember his name and did not know how to open a conversation as his silence seemed to suggest she was expected to. The waiter came, the man looked to her: she ordered her usual brand of Scotch and he made it — Two doubles and what is there — chips, nuts. — He sent the chips back because they were stale. Then he began to speak, address — yes, he had been, he was addressing her — now, with questions about what she had had to say, at her Administrator’s request, in the meeting just ended. If he did not look at her or acknowledge her presence at these official sessions, it appeared that he — she unaware of this attention as he had shown himself of her existence — listened to her duly Agency-correct depositions. There had been a contentious discussion about the ratio of subsistence crops to cash crops, particularly those with potential for export, in rural development. He wanted to know how the Agency arrived at its recommended balance, and how, in other developing countries the rural people could be convinced that it was (he had the term ready from the Government’s unwritten primer) the way forward.