Nadine Gordimer - Loot and Other Stories

She was in a bar with this composed, impersonal man, but she had two good swallows of whisky bringing her to smile across his distance. — Of course. You try telling someone to grow wholesome grain and potatoes when he wants to sell tobacco leaf and afford a TV or enough cash to buy an old car, new clothes! And what about the big money from drug crops, marijuana …—

But from his side, the conversation in the beer-reeking dingy nook built during colonial rule in nostalgia for an English pub was being conducted as a continuation of the afternoon meeting where the Agency’s agenda (hidden agenda as the phrase-book defines these) and the Government’s counterpart were trawling for accommodation. She managed, through contexts of his questions, to find out that he was Deputy-Director-General in the Ministry of Land Affairs, handman-of-the-Minister’s-handman, the Director-General. When the waiter hovered, he waved him away over the two emptied whisky glasses; she wondered whether he expected her to acknowledge this session was over, and rise, or if that would seem presumptuous — Agency protocol must respect official precedence in such decisions. But she could tactfully indicate that it was time to leave: there was something acceptably conclusive about her referring her host to her Administrator: —I know Mr Henderson would be only too pleased to talk to you about our successes — and our problems! Afghanistan, Colombia … nothing he hasn’t experienced—

They walked out together. The corridor, like the whisky glasses, had emptied; they said goodnight and then as if remembering the most elementary protocol, he offered his hand to her.

Roberta Blayne told her Administrator that the Deputy-Director in the Ministry of Land Affairs had approached her with some further questions about the subsistence crop-cash crop debate; Henderson said they might make it their business to cultivate the man, he hadn’t been prominent in the debate that afternoon, nor was heard from much at other sessions where you’d expect him to speak up, mh? — but one didn’t know who was or was not influential behind the scenes in the cabinet. What was his name again?

A Saturday ten days later she was drying her hair when the phone rang and a secretarial voice informed her that the Deputy-Director in the Department of Land Affairs was on his way to visit her; was this convenient. But it was a statement, not a question. She had only just combed out her hair and wriggled bare feet into sandals when she heard a horn and from her window saw the man who woke her with tea and polished the floors, heels flung up as he raced to open the gates. A black car of the luxury models provided for officials just below ministerial level came crunching over the gravel, delivered the Deputy-Director of Land Affairs at the front door, and was directed by the houseman round to the yard.

She had the door open: there he was, Deputy-Director Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma, still formally dressed in a suit as he would be on official occasions, although it was Saturday. They shook hands once more. She led him to the livingroom. — You may have been in this house some other time — when Chuck Harris was the Agency’s man here, with his team? You probably know the place, anyway.—

— Thank you. No, I did not have the occasion to come to this particular house, of course I knew Mr Harris and his people. I was in the Ministry of Agriculture during that period.—

— Well that must have been an ideal preparation, for Land. I’ll get us some tea — you’d prefer coffee?—

— Whatever. It is a good background to have, that I agree, but the problems are different, yes, agriculture’s — they come after the question of ownership of the land—

She was at the passage leading to the kitchen. But when this man of few words at working breakfasts and meetings did begin to talk he expected no interruption. She had to hover there.

— The Ministry where I was … was deployed … before — Agriculture, we came up against it all the time, excellent opportunities from the point of view of developing better farming practices, introduction of new crops and so on — the best expertise from other countries, the agencies and all that. But to introduce this on little plots everywhere, all over, too small for anything but subsistence farming — where is the land.—

— Oh we understand only too well in what my boss calls our outfit — we know that until the land’s reclaimed that was taken from you in colonial times, the larger agricultural projects we advise can’t go further than enthusiasm … Even yours, if we convince you they’re good … That’s why we have to look at projects we’re able to get going now. The community ones people from those little plots can work on together — oh you’ve heard it all before—

She got away to order the tea, words trailing after her.

In the kitchen she found a uniformed driver and two men with the heavy shoulders, armed belts, and discreet communication contraptions in their ears — the display of bodyguards as the spread tail is the display of a peacock — seated round the kitchen table already drinking tea from the houseman’s big mugs. The houseman was animatedly hostly over them but set about at once putting some relic of a starched lace mat on a tray for the other serving he would bring to her and the occasion of her distinguished guest, a man from the Government.

The guest appeared to be still with the statement left behind in the passage, ignoring her ritual of serving him tea, before he spoke. It could have been unease, or the self-confidence of status. He had the gift of the closed face that blackness, in her experience, enviably makes obscure. The so-called inscrutability of the Chinese was no match. He was very black, no taint of colonial dilution in the blood, there.

— You are satisfied with the progress?—

Did he mean of the country or the Agency’s efforts within it? Safer to take it as reference to the Agency. — How could we be? Always want to achieve more, feel we could have done more. Progress is slow … our approach is to learn what’s needed, right where we are—

— How does it compare?—

So he had meant his country. Had he been sent by someone — another hidden agenda — to get something out of an unsuspecting female, not in a high position but in the know, close to the Administrator of funds.

Not so easy with this one, he was going to find; and let him wonder if she was too innocently stupid to suspect what he was after, or too alertly experienced in such devious politicking to let him get at it. She produced the Agency’s stock responses, reassuring appreciation of the Government’s sharing of objectives, unchallengeable knowledge of its own people, vital element of their history in influencing, guiding the possibilities of the present etc. All this compared, she would say, rather favourably (her tongue’s quick caution had held back ‘very’) with other territories where the Agency had operated.

— And you were always with him, so for you also, you know his impressions.—

— Always, no. But in the last few years. I’ve been fortunate enough to learn a lot from him. Experience with him.—

And for the half-hour or less the subject — whatever it really was — went no further. He followed the necessary preliminary of hitching the cuff of his striped shirt that protruded at the correct length from his jacket sleeve, looking at his watch. — I have a meeting.—

He named another province, a two-hour journey away.

She called to the kitchen, for him, and in the moments of silence as they walked together to the front door they could hear the loud and laughing farewells between his driver and bodyguards and her houseman.

As he was about to step into the car brought round with a flourish from the yard, he turned. — I hope I did not disturb your weekend.—