Nadine Gordimer - None to Accompany Me

She began to appear at many of the meetings he attended. Glided in, late, graceful with her well-dressed big hips, eyebrows arched when anyone was long-winded. She had a complaint about her director, who didn’t want to attend and made a habit of asking her to do so in his stead. Let’s have a post-mortem, she would say, at home. She and Didymus were the best of comrades, best for one another, of all others, at such times. The months she had gone about her work in London and taken care of their child without knowing or asking where he was, the letters — suddenly, sometimes, a love letter — that came to her unsigned through some country other than the one he was in, the strangely pure emotion of his returns — what other relationship between a man and a woman could prove such trust? The abstentions from adultery that ‘trust’ means to most couples are petty in comparison; this was a grand compact beyond the capacity of those who live only for themselves. They argued, they met in complicity over this issue or that, together in the line each would follow, she in her department, he at his higher level. They defended to each other a partiality for or lack of confidence in certain leaders. — We need someone tough and quick-thinking in that sort of negotiation. Sebedi’s too much like— (she closed her eyes and thrust her head forward, pinching the bridge of her nose) — he’s an old rhino, only one horn, only one tactic—

— But when he charges, aih! There’s force, he knocks the hell out of government spokesmen.—

— Ah … how often? By the time he’s got his bulk together to charge, they’ve slipped the issue to something else, out of the way.—

— Not always. Not always. I’ve seen him make a hit. And what you must remember is that he’s impressive, these early days, he sits with his hands folded and his big head held back that way, and the government boys see he’s really listening to them, he doesn’t scratch himself and drink water and stub out cigarettes like some of the other comrades, the young ones who’re only thinking what they’re going to say next. He commands respect. —

She drew back in staring reproach. — Who wants respect from those people? Those bastards who’ve been mixed up in hit squads, who’ve sent their men in to murder our people at the funerals of people those same police have killed? It’s the other way round — they have to be shown there’s no respect due to them!—

— Then you don’t understand negotiation. There has to be an appearance of respect, it’s got to be there, it’s like the bottles of water and the mike you switch on before you speak. It’s a convention. It reassures those ministers and aides. And it traps them. They think if they hear themselves nicely addressed as minister this and doctor that, if they’re listened to attentively, the whole smoothing-over process is in progress, the blacks have been flattered into talking like white gentlemen, they’re nicely tamed. Why do you think we turn up in suits and ties instead of the Mao shirts and dashikis the leaders in countries up North wear? So that the Boers on the other side of the table will think there’s a code between us and them, we’ve discarded our Afrieanness, our blackness is hidden under the suit-and-tie outfit, it’s not going to jump out at them and demand! Not yet.—

Sibongile was twirling her hands in impatience to interrupt. — And out lumbers the old rhino! Where are the young lions?—

— Queueing up at your office, that’s where — the only place they can be. They’re the ones you’re trying to find jobs for!—

Mpho watched her parents as if at a tennis match, sometimes laughing at them, sometimes chipping in with an opinion of her own. Sibongile and Didymus encouraged her, proud of a bright girl whose intelligence had been stimulated in exile by a superior education which perhaps also disadvantaged her by setting her apart among black youngsters. They were uneasy about the school they had been relieved to find for her; although ‘mixed’ most of the pupils were white, it retained the ethos and rituals of a white segregated school. They were grateful that in the early weeks when they were staying with their friends the Starks, Vera had introduced the girl to some decent young black people with whom she enjoyed herself. Her surprising attachment to her grandmother unfortunately did not mean that there were any suitable contacts for her in the dirt and violence of a place like Alexandra.

Didymus kept in himself a slight tautness, the tug of a string in the gut ready to tighten in defence of Sibongile — he was troubled that her frankness would be interpreted as aggression; her manner, sceptical, questioning, iconoclastic, would be taken as disrespectful of the traditional style of political intercourse that had been established in the higher ranks of the Movement through many years of exile, and would count against her advancement at the level to which she had, for the first time, gained access. Even the way she used her body: coming into conference, where she was by proxy rather than right, on high heels that clipped across the floor, no attempt to move discreetly. He was anxious; not looking at her, as if that would prevent others from being annoyingly distracted, then not being able to prevent himself from being aware of the stir of legs and seats as perfume marked the progress of her breasts and hips to her place. He felt that even her obvious undocile femininity would count against her; the physical disturbance she made no attempt to minimize prefigured the disturbance in the male appropriation of power she might seem presumptuous enough to ignore. He was sensitive to any response to her comments, sometimes hearing, as offensive proof of what he feared for her, undertones that merely made her laugh (the volume of her laugh was not moderated to the atmosphere of conference, either) or provided her with the opportunity of expounding a new point. He was familiar with the way things were done, always had been done, must be done, he was part of them; he could sense how others would feel towards a personality like Sibongile’s; and a woman’s. What he knew was remarkable in her could be misunderstood. He did not know how to give her the benefit of his own experience, teach her how to conduct herself if she wanted to realize the ambitions he saw were awakened in her. Home for her was the politics of home. That’s how things had worked out. But she wasn’t going about it in the right way. He feared the effect of failure on a person with such high confidence in and expectations of herself. God help me, and Mpho, and everyone else she knows, when that happens.

Didymus was against nepotism, but what is nepotism? — nothing more than putting in a word when this seems appro priate. He was one of the old guard, there were private moments when he could remark to a comrade with whom he had experienced much in so many situations and crises, that he scarcely saw Sibongile these days, she was working so hard, she was so dedicated to her returnees. And the permissible observation was always received with some such formula: Oh yes, she’s doing a remarkable job of it. But whether this was a cautious assurance that her value was not unrecognized, and went no further, or whether it was to remind the old comrade that he should not think he could promote his wife, the response was dismissive. A brush-off.

Driving through an area where her work took her Mrs Stark’s attention to the voice beside her and what she was seeing about her kept being diverted, as if by a seized muscle which will not be discernible to any companion. There was, among the documents in that loaded sling bag that was always with her, a letter found in her office mail that morning. Ivan’s handwriting on the envelope, not addressed as usual by one of his typists and sent to his childhood home. She had opened it in the awkward privacy granted to the recipient of a letter in the company of others. Hardly taken in any details, any explanation; just the central fact her skimming arrested: Ivan was getting divorced. She folded the letter without reading the last page and thrust it somewhere in the bag.