Nadine Gordimer - My Son's Story

— Don't be silly, I'm not going to be disguised as anything.—

The girl's playful threat turned into an embrace, her arm hooked round her father's neck. They were laughing, protesting to each other, and then abruptly stopped; she kissed him fiercely on his cheek. He felt her jaw jar against the bone.

— It's the 'cleansing of the graves' of the nine youngsters who were shot by the police last week outside Jubilee Hall. They were buried yesterday. The street committees have asked for some kind of oration. The kids were comrades.—

As he said 'oration' the boy came in, after all. In the glance of greeting he gave his son he felt a tic of embarrassment, as if he had been caught out quoting Shakespeare as he used to do to give the boy the freedom, at least, of great art.

They sat together round the table in the breakfast nook Sonny had built with Will's help, as they had made things together back in Benoni; Saturday shopping, the love of a schoolteacher for a virgin, the happiness of the first Baby and then the son named for genius — all this was pressing hard against their thighs. Aila rose and slid into her place again with the grace that did not brush against cup or cloth, fetching yogurt and replenishing margarine. Baby was recounting the highly embellished story of the driving test she had just taken, and tried to rile her brother into the old exchange of sibling insults. — Oh I'm perfectly confident. I even drove a truck while I was still on my learner's. You know that? The only thing that bugs me is the behaviour of you barbarians on your souped-up bikes, rushing out of nowhere. You think just by keeping your lights on everyone's got to pull out of your way as if you were the fire engine — I don't know why Dad ever gave in to your nagging for one of these things, honestly, Will.—

He hesitated, choosing an apple. — I never asked for it.—

There was warning in her big, kohl-smeared eyes as he looked up fully at her, though she quickly laughed: —Oh no, I'll bet you never! Never dreamt of asking! Never entered your curly head, brother of mine!—

Jars and cups passed warm from hand to hand, a headline was read out by someone, the mother arranged with the son to do an errand for her, the chitter of china, crunch of knives through toast and splutter of poured tea linked the ellipses of breakfast remarks. All had been rehearsed countless times. It was not really happening; an echo, a formula being followed. The inconsequential talk was contained in the silence between them that all gathered there heard.

Sonny had said he was in a hurry, in order to get away before the boy appeared. He had to bear out the lie. He rose from the table but Aila got up when he did and left the kitchen before him.

— Ciao, Will.—

Goodbye, he said. The boy always took care to make Sonny feel his son wanted him to be imprisoned again: something to put a stop to him. Farewell. Never come back.

The lovely girl had wiped her eyes clean with her mother's dishcloth, and now was quite unblemished by whatever her night had been. — Be careful, Daddy. Here — put this down for me. — She took a rose, grown in Aila's garden, out of the vase on the breakfast table.

He had Baby's flower in his hand when Aila met him in the passage with a zipped carryall. He knew what was in it. Toothbrush and paste, towel, soap, pyjamas, change of socks and underpants, sweater. The essentials you were allowed to pack up if you were lucky enough to be taken into detention from home and not while speaking at the cleansing of the graves. She had been gone from the kitchen less than a minute. — How did you do that?—

— I keep it ready. — She was smiling. She shrugged as if to discount herself, excuse some interference.

— It's not necessary. I'll be all right.—

She stood there. She licked her lips. Stood there.

He picked up the bag in the hand in which he held the flower. — Baby's, to put on the graves. — He looked about, out of habit, for the briefcase, took it in the other hand, and she opened the front door for him.

Not ciao, no goodbye. — Don't worry, Aila.—

— I'll be there. I'll hear you. I was going with the DPSC* and Black Sash,** anyway.—

He had time for breakfast, with Hannah. A cup of coffee and half a slice of her toast spread with fish-paste — Because I taste of it already. — She was still in the outsize T-shirt in which she slept, and the slight hollow that trembled along the underside of her soft-fleshed arm from armpit to elbow, as she lifted it about the objects on the table, drew his eye and made him lean over and taste her mouth for himself. Her breasts and belly were so near under the cotton rag that the flesh warmed his hand as if it were held before a sleepy fire. — Couldn't you come with me?—

She took deep, smiling breaths to regain control of herself. — Better not, don't you think?—

— Of course. Maybe I can give you a lift back. You'll find some excuse.—

The treat of spending the short journey together was tempting; she smiled and played with his hand, which recently she had swabbed with cerise water-colour and imprinted on a sheet of paper now pinned to the wall. — No. Unless I get them to drop me off in Pretoria, that I could do — and we'd meet somewhere?—

— Outside the Palace of Justice? — It was at that rendezvous that he had stood trial. His dark, cocky grin that came from prison, happy for battle, delighted her. — Unfortunately I'm going to have to hurry back. There's a meeting around five— I imagine the ceremony should be over by four-thirty… if the police don't shut it down long before. Hadn't you better get dressed? What time's your bus leaving?—

— Oh it doesn't take me ten minutes. is that for me? — He had thrown the carryall in the boot but absently brought in the rose with his briefcase.

— For the graves.—

— What a lovely thing to do.—

He could not lie to her. — My daughter gave it. She came in this morning.—

— Good for her. I must pick up some flowers, too, on the way.—

The face of a woman who uses no make-up has unity with her body. Seeing Hannah's fair eyelashes catching the morning sun and the shine of the few little cat's whiskers that were revealed, in this innocent early clarity, at the upper corners of her mouth, he was seeing the whole of her; he understood why, in the reproductions of paintings he had puzzled over in the days of his self-education, Picasso represented frontally all the features of a woman — head, breasts, eyes, vagina, nose, buttocks, mouth — as if all were always present even to the casual glance. What would he have known, without Hannah!

She had picked up his hand and buried her big soft face in it, kissing the palm. When she lifted her head her cheeks were stinging pink, slapped by pride. — I'm so glad you're the one chosen to speak.—

Sunday peace.

The combis that, sending gusts of taped reggae and mba-qanga into the traffic, transport blacks back and forth between township and city, now carry a strange cargo of whites. The street committees in the township have advised that this is the way to bring them in, the nature of the vehicles in themselves giving the signal to the people that these envoys from outside the siege are approved.

Through the white suburbs. Past bowling greens where figures like aged schoolboys and girls in banded hats genuflect over balls; past the Robin Hood fantasy of an archery club, the whoops of regular Sunday tennis partners in private gardens, the nylon frills and black suits of the congregation leaving a Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, and the young girls with cupboards full of clothes who choose to stroll barefoot in jeans slashed off at the thigh. Past electronically-operated gates pinnacled with plaster eagles, spike- and razorwire-topped walls behind which peacock-tails of water open over flowers and birds sing. Sunday peace. If it were not for the combi owners' township names and addresses painted on the vehicles, the convoy might be some sort of charity outing on its way to a picnic. Now and then it is paced by joggers who drop back without noticing it.