Nadine Gordimer - The Pickup

— The chances of appeal succeeding for Mr …? would have been perhaps marginally better if you had been married. He would have had the advantage of the provision that the spouse of a national — and of course, Julie — Miss Summers, you are unquestionably that — has the right of permanent residence. A moment: wait… To resort to marriage now — at this stage — would only prejudice your case further; it would be seen as a device to gain residence, that’s all. Marriage to a national as a positive factor in seeking entry to a country or appealing for permanent residence, a stay of expulsion order, has to have been of a duration — proof that it is a genuine relationship. You follow. Too many would-be immigrants are ready to pay some woman for a marriage certificate — the consummation’s only on paper, the divorce follows after a suitable interval. Home Affairs, who presented you with your order to leave (he points the beard gently at the young foreigner) is aware of these tricks. So: useless, at this crucial stage, for you.—

Some sort of guarantees — support of the application— good character and financial means — would these be of any help? There’s this business of someone becoming a burden on the state?

Nigel Ackroyd Summers’ daughter, of course. But she had said, don’t tell my father I’ve approached you … Well, most likely the girl has money already settled on her independently — common practice among people of means to ensure death duties are reduced when that bad day comes.

— Letters of support, presumably from people of solid reputation … yes, could have been useful to you in a less, how shall we put it, already prejudiced situation. Hopelessly prejudiced. What else can one say. Here is a young man who entered by dubious means and once his permit was expired was ordered to leave how long ago—

The beard singles her out and she does not answer; confirming the length of time is like a criminal’s admission of guilt. The beard tips to the young man in question, in the dock.

— One year and five months some weeks.—

— There you are. Ah-heh … You were ordered to leave one year and more than five months ago, you — disappeared — you stayed on in contravention of the law, you managed to evade the law, you made yourself guilty of transgression of the Immigation Act, you defied Home Affairs. And fortunately for you, because of their inefficiency I’m only too aware of from the time I was in legal practice, your case slipped into some crack in a filing system, got lost in their computers, they smoked their cigarettes and chatted and looked at their watches for the time to go home and they forgot about you! Perhaps we can say you were lucky. Forgotten! You had your reprieve, your time… I don’t know if this was fortunate, if we look at your position now.—

But they are seated before him now, the young woman and the man who came to her from where he disappeared, under a car on a dirty garage floor, months and weeks have been theirs, he’s not for you, she’s not for him but they have been, they are, for each other!

His flow can’t be challenged, he can’t be interrupted, he is presenting his Heads of Argument, it’s habitual, unstoppable.

— You have placed yourself in the position where you have a criminal charge waiting against you, let alone an order to quit the country. That is the sticking point. That is what weighs against however many testimonies to your character, your desirability as a future citizen, your possibilities of financial guarantees, security etcetera you might submit. I regret very much to tell you these incontrovertible facts! You were told your permit had expired and would not be renewed; you elected to stay on illegally, you shed your identity and took on an assumed name. If you had left, gone back to your country of origin or wherever you might have thought you would get in, if you had re-applied for immigration from there, outside these borders — then the testimonials from prominent citizens here might indeed have served you well … guarantees … Money is always useful. Yes — (the deep note sounded, drawn out again). Ah-heh. These people take bribes. You know that. We all know that. Ah-heh. It is the epidemic that attacks the freedom won for our country, sickening us from inside, one of the running sores of corruption. All right. With money no doubt — enough money — you could buy someone’s hands to tear up that latest order to quit the country. You could keep your fake name some more months, find another one, disappear once again for — I don’t know — maybe another year, but some other functionary with a grudge against the first will find your record come up on a computer, there will be another criminal charge against you, yours will become an habitual status, evasion of the law plus bribery.—

— So you can’t suggest anything, Mr Motsamai?—

He continues to look deeply at her, his eyebrows rise slowly.

A flush of resentment: he’s not for you, that’s what he’s really saying: the famous lawyer is one of them, her father’s people and their glossy Danielles comparing the purchase of Futures and Hedging Funds, sitting here in his corporate palazzo, it doesn’t help at all that he is black; he’s been one of their victims, he’s one of them now. He, too, expects her to choose one of her own kind — the kind he belongs to.

She stands up to leave. But it is as if his old skill in reading distressed supplicants has given him intuition of what she is judging of him; he has ignored her and is turned to her foreigner.

— I know how it is. Man, my people were turned back at many emigration and immigration gates. Many years, centuries. Myself, when I was young. When I had the opportunity of going abroad for further study. The Sixties — it took three years — always yes-no, yes-no — for the papers finally to be refused. Exit permit, one way — out and don’t come back — that’s the stamp I had to take then.—

Thank you. Goodbye. She too, has her intuitions, she knows what he’s up to, claiming his rightful brotherhood of his people’s suffering along with his present successful distancing from it. But he has yet other skills at his disposal, mastered in court and in the board rooms, he knows how to respond disarmingly to witnesses’ hostility and that of difficult trustees. He will answer, in his own time, the question he ignored. — Well… I have taken on many apparently hopeless cases in my day, so I suppose I must suggest you go to a lawyer who is stupid enough to take on such cases and clever enough to see what he can do with yours. I could call a former colleague.—

— Thank you. No. Thank you—

She is stayed by the grasp on the forearm of the hand that supplies her with caresses.

— That will be good. Thank you very much. Can it be now? Can you do it? We can go any time, straight away.—

— Well, I have a meeting, papers to go through — but I’ll get my assistant to call my colleague the moment I’m free, and when I’ve spoken to him she’ll call you — she has your number, Miss Summers, you have a cell of course—

Thrusts the car keys at him.

All right. All right. There is his beautiful smile, for her, from the first days.

Pompous fart.

All right. All right. Before he starts the engine he does the necessary thing, hooks an arm round her and kisses her tense cheek.

We can find our own lawyer. Shouldn’t have gone to him anyway. I might have known what he’d be thinking about all the time: what my father would say! And I don’t believe he really knows anything about this sort of problem, he wouldn’t have been that kind of lawyer, not spectacular enough for him, not murder.

You are wrong, you know. He knows about taxes. How not to pay, yes. But that also is difficult. That is the world, like the other friends of your father, he knows how it works the same kind of all sorts of ways for other things.