Nadine Gordimer - The Pickup

The girl is an idiot. What else can you expect. Never getting out of this place, accustomed to being spoken to as I am speaking to her, by brothers like me.

Where else to turn to.

He cannot evade any longer. Her presence has been following him about the house from confrontation to confrontation, hearing him, aware of his frustration, his failure to extract from anybody any answers real to him; her authoritative version of his face is before him all the time. If she is at prayer — she is the only one from whom he will hold back, the others have been burst upon. He will wait. Everyone keeps out of the family living-room. Away from him. Even the children are hastily snatched when they linger at the leading doors. He sits in one of the upright chairs second-hand from Uncle Yaqub when his house was redecorated. Facing her empty throne. Biding his time. There is no cyclone of emotion of which she does not occupy the still eye of his respect. Nothing, ever, can take precedence over that.

He does not have to wait long. She comes into the room as if it is at her summoning that he is there, and occupies her sofa. He gets up to greet her and takes a chair nearer her she indicates with a half-tilt of a hand from her lap.

She knows what has happened. Or rather what threatens to happen — it’s seeped through the house in whispers and in the supersonic of thoughts. She must have had related to her many versions. But he tells her all, over again all comes from his own mouth as only he can know it. She asks questions, gives no opinions.

This girl did not have a family at home in her country.

Well, of course she has, but she does not get on well with them — her father.

Her mother is dead, inna lillah, may the Lord have mercy on her daughter.

Her mother remarried and she’s well-off — she lives in America and will welcome her.

She found our life here strange to her.

Well, yes, of course she must have but you know she has made the effort — to fit in — just for while we had to be here.

This time, is there suitable work for your ambitions already arranged for you in that country.

Not yet — wonderful opportunities there that have not been where I’ve been away before! — other times, those other countries.

She wished to have a child.

Yes and I would wish it, but not until I know we are settled, my work, and a home where we are going to spend our lives.

She gets up, weighty in her robe. Her left foot falters for balance.

She’s getting old; this is what you return to, abandon, each time.

Mother—

But she, who always has advice and a solution, for everyone, whether this is welcome or not, has none for him. My son — she gives him her blessing— Allah yahfazak, and she leaves the room, he knows, for her place of prayer.

Mother?

Ah, an ally, that’s it; but not his. An ally of the foreigner— she will be the one to restore the son to the mother, lure him, bring him home at last.

There is a terrible strength that comes to a dread decision aghastly opposed by other people: their words, supplication, silent condemnation, are hammer blows driving that decision deeper and deeper into its certainty.

Maryam’s clinging affection and unexpressed joy at the idea that her unique friend, from another world and closer in understanding than any sister, would stay in her husband’s home, like other women, was the only support; his mother— no indication, no word or sign transmitted from her, her usual stately presence supervised calmly in the kitchen where the girl, Ibrahim’s wife, continued to do what was assigned to her, just as if the mother were not aware that she was supposed to be emigrating with the son in twenty-four hours. And the girl slices onions as if she cannot be aware of this either.

Twenty-four hours. The decision that has been growing in her, changing her as the cells in the body renew themselves spontaneously, becomes a clench of panic: it’s happening too quickly, too soon, the time has come before she’s really ready—

Funk.

Way back, The Table has the word.

But it’s all been thought out, felt through, dismissed, rejected as crazy (yes, he’s not alone in making that accusation; become self-accusation), renewed, taking over — final — many times in the months: the meantime, as he called it.

He would not allow himself or her to lie down on their bed, to submit even to exhaustion that night. If he could plead, reason, argue, bargain, reproach, rage long enough the time that was left would sweep her in this flash flood to the airport, onto the plane that would carry her away with him just as she had carried herself with him, deported to this place.

Listen … we’ll make a good life there. You want me to do something I want, the kind of position … use my brain, study — you always tell me that. You are the one who knows I can do it. You’ll be happy. You’re happy with me — I make you happy — yes, and you, how can I be without you. A couple of weeks, while you’re in California, I don’t have to worry if you’ve got everything you need — all right, but we have some money, I can even come there to see you. I will. You’ve followed all this way with me, I’m so lucky, I know, so how can it be—

So why? Why? Why did you come? Why — you bought that ticket for yourself? You hung on to me? What for? Don’t say it! Just don’t say it. Not now.

His conviction that ‘love’ is a luxury not for him has found its proof. Yes.

Won’t have her say it; she sees. Say something else that has the same meaning.

Ibrahim, you’d think I was leaving you, the way you take it. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going back there, I’ve told you, told you. I’m in your home.

You are a liar. Why did you never say one word to me? You were lying to me all the time. Here in this bed with me kissing and lying. Fucking and lying.

I never lie to you.

Ah no? You only lie with the mouth? Keep quiet when there is what you must say, that’s not lying?

I thought, I really thought you saw how I was beginning — you make it so hard to explain — to live here. Oh my god. How I was different — not the same as I was back there when you met me. I thought we were close enough for you to understand, even if it was something you — didn’t expect …

Not lying when you got the money from your uncle for the tickets? Not lying when you signed the papers for the visa, not lying when you went smiling to the embassy to show them your face, my wife ‘accompanying me’, you saw it written on my visa? No? That was not lying? Or was that true then, and now — I don’t know, out of the sky something somebody has changed your mind, driven you crazy? Where did you get the idea from, how, where?

And while his anguish batters them both she now knows where. The desert.

But she cannot tell him that. The stump of wall in the sands where the street ends. The dog waits and a child places a hand.

She cannot tell him that.

He shuns the desert. It is the denial of everything he yearns for, for him. And if he should remember — the enthusiasms of some members of The Table — his next derision could be that her decision was a typical piece of sheltered middle-class Western romanticism. Like picking up a grease-monkey.

Confusion is singing in his ears. But what is the confusion? No confusion; I should know that. Like me, like me, she won’t go back where she belongs. Other people tell her she belongs. She looks for somewhere else. I’m staying here. Here!

The elegant suitcase is standing packed. Finally he can’t stop staring at it. He lunges to it and struggles with the digital lock, the combination comes to him and he gets it open and begins to throw out all her things; on the bed, on the floor. Now she will do it. Put them back, give in.