Nadine Gordimer - My Son's Story

The sexual excitement of bringing the two women together entered him as a tincture, curling cloudy in a glass of water.

She reminds me of pig. Our ancestors didn't eat pig.

A few bright hairs look like filaments of glass embedded in the pink flesh round her mouth.

I have terrible thoughts. About her. About my father with her. I imagine them… could I ever think of my mother like that! I'm sick with myself. What he's made me think about.

What'd he send me there for? I keep going over the place. What I saw, what he made me see. Her pants and bras on the radiator. The bed, right there where you walk in. Don't they know about privacy? People like her, so dedicated to our freedom, worming their way to get to see our prisoners, standing on our doorsteps. I should never have let her pass. Stupid kid that I was. The man of the house. They bring you up to be polite and then put you in situations they didn't tell you could ever happen.

What did he send me there for? I keep thinking about it and as I change, get older — every month makes a difference when you're young and finding out about yourself — my answers change. Forbidden pig. Pink pig. I've thought what he wanted was to mix me up in it. What men feel. It suits him, now, to think of me as a man like himself. Who wants to fuck. Who feels guilty about it; he counts on me, a kid like me, being guilty of having these mad wild feelings. When I was really a kid he told me just the opposite: I tried to hide the signs of masturbation on my underpants and he told me, son, there's nothing to feel guilty about — what I did to myself was natural. Now he wants me to see her, see what he enjoys and be guilty with him of what he feels because I understand it in myself. A bond. Tied. Father and son more like good buddies.

That's what I've thought.

And then again — I've come to understand something else. I think I have. It's come to me from my body, yes. (If he believed I'd learn from my own body, he's right, there.) I think what he wants is to show off his virility. To me. The proof of his virility. That clumsy blonde. The bed where he does it, the highbrow music he's doing it to, the show-off picture on the wall he sees while he's doing it, the underwear she takes off those places where he can touch her — he, not me, not me. (Not I — he would correct me.) He sent me to her to show me it's not my turn yet. He's not moving aside, off women's bodies, for me. I needn't think, because I'm tall as he is and I've got the same things between my legs he's got, and (the tannies don't let me forget it) I'm growing up 'handsome as he is', I haven't even been let off those bloody thick eyebrows that make his eyes so sexy — I shouldn't think he needs to give over to me. The old bull still owns the cows, he's still capable of serving his harem, my mother and his blonde.

I don't think my father knows any of these things about himself. Only I know, only I.

When the schoolteacher led the children across the veld he did so on his own impulse and responsibility. That naïvety was no longer possible. — There's no freedom in working for freedom. — He could say it to Hannah, and they both laughed. There was pride and scepticism in the laughter. You couldn't say such things to Aila; between Aila and him was the old habit of simple reverence for living useful lives. He had to keep it up, as other things had to be kept up, before her. Why, when he was in prison she evidently had not disturbed her habits, somehow carried on as if nothing had happened; now she treated his way of life — its structures clandestine, its activities directed by Committees and Desks, its dangers constant — as if he had been still the schoolmaster and received a posting to a new school. An enemy of the State: and when he told her the few things about his work he could tell her (he had to talk to her about something, had to find something to drive away the silence between Aila and him) she listened consideringly as she had to the tales of those petty problems he used to have teaching school, when they lived in the ghetto outside Benoni-son-of-sorrow, first married.

He took part in policy decisions somewhere below the highest level and thereafter, in a group where he himself participated in allocation of the activities of others, was in turn given his orders. How much any one should be exposed was always a worried calculation based on the current number of comrades detained or serving prison sentences — how many, outside, could be spared. There were agonized decisions about who should appear where, when public occasions demanded a presence if the movement were to retain its popular power. He was no Tutu or Boesak or Chikane, and he could have been blacker, but as one of the best speakers, bloodied by prison, he had to be used only where he would be most effective with least risk. But who could calculate risk? Something to smile over, again, with Hannah. The black ghettos were army encampments and police dogs with their gun-carrying handlers replaced white ladies with poodles in the shopping malls. The headquarters of trade unions and militant church organizations were tramped through regularly by raiding police. Some were mysteriously blown up or burned. At road-blocks around the city armoured cars stood and every black driver was flagged down and searched. As the schools boycott combined with rent boycotts proved exceptionally effective, taking whole communities out of government control, Sonny was used mostly on occasions when someone from the blacks' National Education Crisis Committee was needed to attack the State education system. At university campuses and ghetto congresses his endearing middle name no longer appeared on posters — he was billed anonymously as 'a prominent educationist'. At least the police would not have previous knowledge of his arrival on a public platform, if they were planning to pick him up.

But there were times when an event often — and best — cohered hastily, before the proposed gathering could be banned. The call for a speaker would come when there was no choice but to send whoever was available in the area.

Sonny told them both. Aila and Hannah.

He mentioned the black township graveyard ceremony at home, and when he told his wife, his daughter was there — she didn't appear for weeks and then suddenly would come in through the kitchen door at some odd hour. She sat eating her cornflakes, the good little girl. The boy avoided meals with him; Sunday breakfast was one of them.

He was confusedly distracted at the sight of his Baby, where she used to be, in her place. As if in sudden disjuncture everything was back where once it was. But his girl was wearing a black satin blouse creased under the arms and the unnecessary paint round her eyes (they were striking enough already) darkened sleep-crumbs at the corners — she had more likely been out all night rather than have got up early to drop in for breakfast at her old home. A bile of distress rose and was swallowed. No time to deal with that; no right time ever, now.

— Where's that place, Daddy?—

Before he could say, Aila turned her head from the gush of water filling the kettle. — The other side of Pretoria. North. — Oh there. But you'll never get in. The army's all round. — He saw that Aila was making fresh tea. She always filled the kettle with cold water when making tea, she would never boil up what was already hot. — I'll have what's in the pot. I've no time.—

— Since when are you a priest, my dear pa-pa. — Coquetry was inborn, for his Baby, even — and since she was a baby— when addressing her father. — Anyway, you're unique, they'll recognize you in your disguise of cassock and whatnot. Your eyebrows! Shall I pluck your eyebrows? Daddy? Yes! — She jumped up and rushed over to him with fingers extended like pincers.