Nadine Gordimer - Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black

His enterprising, hard-working wife had more women coming to be clothed by her than she could ‘take on’ as she said in quick-witted acquisition of their turns of phrase, their vision of themselves, their scattering of the word ‘darling’ as punctuation of what neckline, what brief scrap of skirt, there in the mirror, would ‘make the best of what I’ve got to show, darling’. They stayed for her coffee after a fitting. Unlike a man, a woman in her difference, her foreign image, is attractive to locals, doesn’t have to conform to some other norm. Her name was not translated into something less exotic. The abbreviation of Zsuzsana, ‘Zsuzsi’, by which she’d been known since childhood, sounded like the familiar ‘Susie’, common in English. An evening dress, a pants suit made by Zsuzsi caught a certain touch of European fashion flair that couldn’t be bought off the peg. She had a little assistant to iron the seams and tack the hems, a young black girl, as he had his black team of muscle to man the trolleys.

IT was through her friendly relations with her clients that it came about.

AS the women for whose image she sewed were inclined to take someone outside their social circle into confidences over their lives she was herself beguiled in turn to confess, with alert precaution of assuring she enjoyed the privilege of making beautiful clothes for the confidante present, that she was tired of working at home. It wasn’t what she was made for; she let it be imagined what that might be. Circumstances kept her shut away from the world. She had ‘had enough’—just as the women phrased it, for her unlikely ear alone, of their drug-addict daughter or the second husband who was more difficult than the first. The mother of that daughter was one who had no complaints about a husband, indeed proud of getting a man she believed her own qualities deserved. One of these was her willingness to help others, which her capable husband in the building industry indulged. Perhaps they were good Christians, or good Jews. His firm specialised in restoring grand neglected houses for new-rich people who aspired to the power and prestige of Old Money the image of such mansions recalled. It was easy enough for her; she had the kind idea that the personality, the appearance of Zsuzsi could go into the business of selling such houses — there was the obvious cachet of a European background, the palimpsest images of familiarity with cultured settings far above local standards. The husband introduced the charming Zsuzsi to an estate-agent friend who agreed to give her a trial once reassured that her English was fluent, even advantageously distinguished from the usual spiel of estate agents by the occasional Continental flourish — as the accent wasn’t German perhaps it was French. She looked good. Well, keep your hands to yourself. She was assigned to a section of the Agency’s upmarket territory, those old suburbs from the days of early gold-mining magnates the latest generation of wealthy whites hunted for tradition that wasn’t political, just aesthetic, not to be misinterpreted, in assertive frontage and form, as nostalgia for lost white racist supremacy. The Agency’s other upmarket activity was where the emergent black jet-set looked to take possession of fake Bauhaus and California haciendas that had been the taste of the final generation of whites in power, the deposed, many of whom had taken their money and gone to Australia or Canada where the Aborigines and the Red Indians had been effectively dealt with.

She worked hard indeed, it seemed to him, who left for the Stores warehouse at the same time every weekday morning and returned at the same time every evening. Even longer hours than she had sat at the sewing machine, its whirrs, snipped-off stops and starts that had accompanied Sundays while he sat reading this country’s newspapers with its particular political obsessions resultant from its history he didn’t share, scenes he couldn’t visualise, and the boy entrancedly mimed American shrieks and howls of heroes and villains he was watching on TV. There are no regular hours in the business of selling houses. Prospective buyers and sellers expect the agent to be at their disposal in the evenings and over weekends, whenever it suits the one who is in the market, so to speak. She could hardly oppose with personal inconvenience: ‘My husband is waiting for me to cook dinner’ he proposed, laughing at presumption of an agent’s life being measured against the client’s. You don’t have to be a philosopher to know immigration means accepting the conditions declared if you want to survive. He and Peter, helpful little lad, put together the meal, frying eggs or heating up the goulash she’d frozen after preparing early some morning — not often the chance for such tasks, some clients want to view houses before going to their offices, legal chambers or doctors’ consulting rooms. And it’s true that it’s a good time to take them viewing, have them come upon a fine house in the fresh light, as a face that may be destined to become familiar, owned. Late-afternoon client viewing appointments would extend into evening, particularly, she learnt and related to him, if things were going well, she could sense that the client’s interest in a particular property was rising; advantage must be taken of this by continuing discussion relaxed over a drink in some elegant hotel bar. If she arrived back from these other houses only when the meal father and son had concocted was greasy-cold, it didn’t matter: she felt the deal was done. He heated up food for her. She would smile to him, almost nervously, for acknowledgement: commission on the sale of such a prime property was going to be higher than she, without qualifications for any profession, could ever have expected to gain, any way, any place.

The money she was bringing in eased some of the stringencies in their life. Peter had fine sports equipment he had yearned for, the old car was traded in for a later second-hand model and now was Fred’s exclusively — the Agency provided Zsuzsi with a car that would give clients confidence in her income status as high enough to be informed of the expectations of their own. But funds didn’t extend to provide for major changes in their life — she had to spend considerably on being well-dressed (no time for homemade outfits), groomed, visits to an expensive hairdressing salon , including manicure, people notice proletarian hands as a sign of limitations. Of course she had the luck to be good-looking, right basis for being produced by these methods as exceptionally so.

They made a handsome couple when it was assumed, on occasion, husbands, wives, or gay partners of the Agency personnel would get together for the obligatory Christmas party, or some cocktail hour to mark particular progress in the business. He did not know the personal incumbents of Zsuzsi’s colleagues, beyond these encounters, well enough to discover what range of topics they might have in common to talk about; except sports events. In this country even women shared this lingua franca . Spectator passion for team sports is the only universal religion. Its faithful adherents are everywhere; he was a football centre-forward as a student somewhere else but the litany held good; he followed the matches on fields locally and internationally and could give all the responses. There were the lunches among the agents only, with professional concerns to be discussed ‘in house’; anyway lunch break at the supermarket didn’t allow time for such leisurely customs. Fred ate in the canteen, or picked up something more to his taste in the deli section where there were hams and spiced sausage imported from Italy and other European countries. Zsuzsi said, yes, good idea, when he once suggested, after mother and son had spent a happily riotous half-hour teasing each other in South African English slang, that they should speak to the boy a short time every day, even round a meal, in Magyar. So that he would have it. It turned out meals were not a suitable choice, the boy was tired after a day at school, play, homework. She didn’t have other spare time.