Nadine Gordimer: None to Accompany Me

— I’m moving to the annexe of Zeph’s house.—

No recognition of the name.

— Zeph Rapulana. You know him. He was at the party we gave when you and Lou were staying with us.—

— When my grandfather died. — A reproof asserting the order of events in better proportion to their significance.

— I think you and Lou talked to him for a while, in the garden that night.—

— The man who sits on boards and is a director of banks and whatnot, you told us? The smooth-talking representative of the new middle class?—

— The squatter camp leader I’ve known for a long time. A good friend.—

Annie was looking at her in sour derisory disbelief. — You’ve always dominated in your own house. You’re going to share with someone, now? Why?—

— It’s an annexe. Quite separate, own entrance and so on. There’s no question of any intrusion, either way. We respect each other.—

— But how did this decision come about? Not out of thin air! Not because you answered an offer of accommodation in the newspaper!—

— We talked about it together.—

— So you’re such great friends. — No reaction: something else Annie sees she is not expected to understand. — And how will you get on with his family. The wife? D’you at least know her? All very well your professional friendships, Vera—

— She lives in the house he built in an area the Foundation fought a successful action over. She doesn’t like the city; the children are all away, grown-up — like mine.—

Annie’s body began to rock gently back and forth, soothing the baby to sleep, and, as if with the movement, her sense of her mother changed, she felt that her mother needed protection from herself — her headstrong naivety. — Ma, so you’re virtually moving in with a man. What will people think?—

From Annie! Vera laughed. What a consideration, from a lesbian, a lesbian parent — Annie! — D’you mean a black man, then?—

— I mean just what I said: my father’s gone to live in London, you move in with another man.—

— I don’t think anyone could think anything about someone my age, and a man.—

Vera had her palms raised in a steeple against her mouth in her familiar attitude of obduracy. Annie seemed to have to capture her attention against the fascination with which she was following the darting ballet of the squirrel approaching and retreating near the verandah.

— Ma, you’re wrong. They’ll think. — She continued to rock, in embarrassment at what she was about to deliver. — And they’ll laugh at you.—

Vera was deeply curious rather than hurt in some residual sexual vanity. — Do you think so? That’s interesting.—

And this roused Annie’s curiosity, or wonder. — What are you experimenting with?—

— Not experimenting. — Vera kindly, but to the point. — You’re the one who’s doing that.—

— We’re doing what we know we want, Lou and I. Simple. I don’t know what it is you think you want. Still. Oh I know— your work, what’s coming for the country — but you? What have you wanted?—

Only someone young could ask this as the single question. Yet she was forced into response. — Now. To find out about my life. The truth. In the end. That’s all.—

— Oh Vera! — A gesture with a hand free of the baby, flourishing the size, the presumption of the answer. — And have you?—

— I’m getting there.—

—‘The truth about your life.’ But that’s not the question. Was it worth it?—

— What?—

— Everything. All that you made happen. The way you’re suddenly making something else happen now.—

— But that’s not the question. It’s not a summing-up. It’s not (Vera has the expression of someone quoting) a bag of salt weighed against a bag of mealies.—

— And so? You’re not obliged to answer because I’m your daughter. I’m not looking for a guiding light …—

But a key opening a door they had looked for entry to only once before, they were in some place of confidence.

Vera searched there for something partially, tentatively explanatory that would not make some homely philosophy of a process that must not be looked back upon with the glance of Orpheus. — Working through — what shall I say — dependencies.—

— What a strange way to see life. Yours, or others on you? — But the sound of Lou’s third-hand Karmann-Ghia (relic of the days when she was a carefree bachelor, so to speak) braking at the gate made Annie forget about an answer. Lou was coming with a smiling here-am-I stride up the path. A cancelled appointment had given her the chance to slip home for lunch — she brought it with her, a hot loaf and a tray of avocados. She dumped these and kissed Annie, was kissed back while she caressed Annie’s nape and both hung over the padded basket where their baby slept.

Home.

Vera is the onlooker to domestic serenity.

Somehow, she and Annie have exchanged places. She has left home, and Annie is making home of a new kind entirely.

Perhaps the passing away of the old regime makes the abandonment of an old personal life also possible.

I’m getting there.

Proposals to the Technical Committee on Constitutional Issues come from all groups and formations. And the groupings scarcely can be defined with any accuracy from week to week. Wild alliances clot suddenly in the political bloodstream, are announced, break up, flow in and out of negotiations. Everyone wants their own future arranged around thein, everyone has plans for a structure of laws to contain their ideal existence. It is the nearest humans will ever get to the myth of being God on Creation Day. Vera Stark and her colleagues sit week after week, sometimes into the night, considering the basis of proportional representation, parties qualifying with five per cent or ten per cent, consensus in Cabinet decisions or on the vote of a two-thirds majority; the percentage by which the President should be elected, the percentage by which amendments to the constitution could be made, the percentage by which the Bill of Rights could be amended, the extent of powers and duties to be assigned to regional legislatures. And on and on. The principle of each proposal is almost without exception the same: every cluster or assembly of individuals wants to protect itself from the power of others. The fallible human beings on the Committee are occupied with the task of finding a way through this that would protect all these without danger or disadvantage to any. Politics began outside the Garden; the violent brotherhood of Cain and Abel can be transformed into the other proclaimed brotherhood only if it is possible to devise laws to bring this about.

Zeph found her in the garden where a place seemed to have been ready for her for some time. He had dinners and evening meetings and she often was in late session with the Committee, so they seldom coincided on working days. But on Sundays they were there. Vera had pensioned off her three-times-a-week maid with her house, but Zeph had an old woman brought in from the country, perhaps a relative, to whom he referred as his ‘housekeeper’ since it was delicate for blacks to admit to employing servants. The woman went to the allday open-air gathering of some religious sect on Sundays, as Zeph went to early service in an Anglican church: Vera cooked breakfast and set it out under the jacaranda mid-morning. He was used to being waited on by women but did not expect it of her, always thanked her as if it were a surprise, and carried the dishes with her back to her small kitchen when they had eaten. They read the papers, passing particular pages to one another without comment; each, out of their particular activities and connections, had knowledge to exchange in private of what was omitted there, not for publication. — No one’ll trust we’re impartial, whatever we put forward to the negotiations, every day when I get to that chair where I sit I have to remind myself of this. And perhaps they’re right? I know, for myself— I’m influenced by the land, at the back of my mind I’m seeing every possible check and balance in terms of how it might affect the question of land distribution. It comes from all my time at the Foundation, it’s been the perspective of my life for so long.—