Nadine Gordimer - The Pickup

It was not the end of it, for him, of course. His father had the right and obligation of long homilies addressed to the son, the family kept out, the house subdued to the death-watch-beetle tlok-tlok of the ornamental clock (also a gift from the Uncle). His mother, rising from prayers that he must feel were for him, summoned him aside and their mingled voices were so low it sounded merely as if prayer were continuing. But if the supreme authority of the Uncle could have no influence on their son, no-one, nothing else would.

What passed between mother and son must have been an apocalypse for both, a kind of rebirth tearing her body, a fearful thrusting re-emergence for him. His wife who had never known, never would know, such emotions — Nigel Ackroyd Summers, and the mother someone imagined in California — felt the force of his with humility and offered all she had in recognition: love-making. In her body he was himself, he belonged to nobody, she was the country to which he had emigrated.

In some accommodation reached with the Uncle by family council, the prodigal nephew was continuing to help out at the vehicle repair workshop as if nothing had happened, to have use of the car, and to go off to the capital during working hours on affairs of his own. He also still pursued family matters since it was felt his education made him the one best qualified to, and one day actually was able to bring news of the brother, Khadija’s husband, Zayd — at the agency there was a letter, a bank draft. Whatever explanations for the long silence were, the withdrawn Khadija did not say whether or not she accepted them. Khadija used a strong perfume, it was the assertion of her presence in the house, constant pungent reminder that she was deserted by a son of this family; when Ibrahim’s wife was impulsively bold enough to approach her and say how glad she was that this sister-in-law’s husband was safe and well, the woman gave a proud wry smile — and then, suddenly, she who never touched anyone but her own children, embraced Julie. Perhaps it was because Julie spent much time with one of the children. Leila had fallen in love with her, as small girls will with some adult who offers activities different from those of a parent; as Julie had fallen in love with Gulliver-Archie. Her kind of Uncle.

Almost a year since they arrived at his home. She was fully occupied now. Strange; she had never worked like this before, without reservations of self, always had been merely trying out this and that, always conscious that she could move on, any time, to something else, not expecting satisfaction, looking on at herself, half-amusedly, as an ant scurrying god knows where. In addition to the ladies’ conversational circle, the lessons for other adults who sought her out, and the play-learning she discovered she could devise (probably started with Leila) for small children, as well as the classes she taught in the primary school, she had been drawn in to coach English to older boys who hoped to go to high school in the capital some day; she had been able to persuade — flatter — the local school principal to let girls join the classes although it was more than unlikely their families would allow them to leave home.

She performed such unskilled tasks as she could be expected to be able to do, among her sisters-in-law, in the preparation of family meals. The mother directed everything, she was obeyed as the guardian of all culinary knowledge and dietary edicts, the ingredients she chose and the methods of preparation she decreed were followed. The ingredients of the food were simple but they were combined and transformed into something subtly delicious, the so-named pilaffs and other ‘ethnic’ dishes fiercely spiced in the alternative cuisine favoured at The Table turned out to have had nothing to do with these. Amazing what you could produce on two paraffin burners. Apparently the mother noted her interest; perhaps a sign of other recognition from the heights of her black-robed dignity, began to call Ibrahim’s wife over and show her, with a gesture authorizing her to try for herself the procedures by which preparation of food, as it should be, were to be performed. The mother smiled — Ibrahim’s smile — when she saw how this privilege of her cuisine and lessons were enjoyed. Occasionally she pronounced (like a ventriloquist’s projection) a few words in English; the exchange with his wife’s halting Arabic might in time even extend to conversation lessons in the kitchen? Amina and Maryam laughed encouragement to her over pots and knives when she spoke to them in their language. In the evenings they were beginning to discuss plans for Maryam’s wedding, not so distant, and Maryam liked her to be there with them, translating for her and looking to her for approval, from the outside world, of the style of the event previewed. In projection of the days of celebration both set aside that Julie would not be there, any more, then. Canada, Australia; wherever this brother, who persisted in pressing for entry, again and again, no matter how many times rejected, would take her away.

Leila had her by the hand.

After the child came home from school and had eaten, neither her mother nor her playmates expected to see her. The child slipped into the lean-to to find if Julie, too, were back home; looked for her where she might be reading under the awning if it were not too hot. When Julie went to the house of Maryam’s employer for the conversational teas, Leila (the first time with her mother’s permission requested) came along. She sat silently, nibbled cake silently. Ibrahim’s wife loves children, the ladies enthused; she had never had anything to do with children, not since the Gulliver games, childhood itself — that had been left behind with The Suburbs. There was another construction — perception of herself formed in — by — this village that was his home. There had been a number in her life; she could sum up — the well-brought-up girl with her panda who would marry a well-brought-up polo player from her father’s club; the public relations gal with personality plus, set to make a career; the acolyte of the remnant hippie community, rehash resurrected from the era they had been a generation too young to belong to; experiences, all; none definitive of herself, by herself. So far. Only the day she stood in the doll’s house and showed him two airline tickets.

Leila by the hand. So small a folding of little bones and flesh-pads it might be just some talisman in her palm. Leila came like this with her to the desert. Nobody missed the child. Nobody knew where they had gone, went as the day cooled; when they returned to the house everyone assumed, as the child hadn’t been seen about, the two had been playing games again in the lean-to; Leila loved the games with coloured pegs and counters Julie had had sent from a shop in London, along with an order of books — she wanted Ibrahim to rig up a shelf for her, could he?

Pack them, you will take them with us.

She and the child walked to the end of the street. Not speaking; Leila sang very softly to herself. Their footsteps had a rhythm and counter-rhythm because Julie’s steps were longer and the child took two to her one. Then there was the sand. Muffling; it sank in, between their toes; they left no trail, it ended in the street, the village dropped behind. They sat together, hand in hand — the desert was too far and wide for the child — as the sun, also, left them and such shadows as they caused in the vastness blurred away. Sometimes the stray dog appeared; what was it he found in the desert, as the woman’s flock of goats found pasture; but this was not the place of questions to be asked of oneself or answered. Sometimes the child leaned her head and might have dropped asleep; children have an exhausting life, you only remember that when you teach in school. Sometimes hand in hand they moved a short way into the desert from the stump of masonry, a smooth dragging gait imposed by depth of sand, and sat down, cross-legged both of them, in the sand. It sifted up, sidled round their backsides, her fleshy one and the child’s neat bones. Go farther and even that undulating scarf of sound, the muezzin’s call from the mosque, is taken in, out of hearing. But she doesn’t go farther, with the child.