Nadine Gordimer - My Son's Story

Sonny had read warning signs for a long time; somehow partly misread. Before Lesotho; that man asleep in the bed close to the earth; before the return with news from Lusaka — months ago Sonny had talked over with Hannah the peculiar attitude of a comrade with whom he had always been in close accord. — 'All smiles, and the next thing, you've got a palace revolution.'— He had said it without knowing fully what he said. And Hannah, she'd reassured that any potential troublemakers would have to believe they could capture the executive before they could attempt anything. Neither he nor she had thought they already might be convinced of success. However well a human being is known, it is never known what is moving in him towards a decisive act, something 'out of character', it's not to be seen how it is slowly coming about, what is preparing for it: the turning aside, the betrayal. You run away and leave the dying man. Just once.

Sonny had to accept that disaffection wasn't going to fizzle out. The learning process is endless. One of the fellows (as he still, sometimes, in schoolmaster brotherliness, privately thought of his comrades) who had been in detention with him was now part of the palace revolution. It was incredible; a wound in Sonny's side. This was one of the comrades Hannah had visited.

— And he used to write such good letters, so spirited — You wrote to him, too?—

— Yes, to everyone, it's our policy, keeping in touch as much as possible. You know that.—

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Although Sonny, with his credentials and his articulacy, would have been many people's choice to 'discipline' the disaffected individuals, it was decided that anyone who had been approached by them was ruled out for the task. The candidates must be among those who had not already shown these men the door. The meeting-ground must not be that of assumed hostility. But he was in caucus meetings with trade union leaders and a delegate to secret meetings with other affiliated radical groups, to discuss their support in the matter. Between meetings and travelling from centre to centre around the country for consultation there were the private-within-private obligations to be available to this one or that who must speak to him alone; the rumours to be considered, the reports coming from those on the other side who were in fact acting as informers for the movement; and the suspicion, to be compared, that this one or that was spying on the movement's deliberations for relay to the disaffected. He scarcely had time or mind to fulfil his other respon-sibilities — the attention owed to what he'd taken on for himself, the two establishments he kept up, the home and the cottage. Fortunately Aila was kept busy either with preparations for her visits to see her grandchild or actually was away on such a visit, and Hannah knew what priorities were. So Aila did not seem to notice when he forgot the date she was to be off again and he looked blank, a moment, when she came into the kitchen with the boy behind her carrying her luggage, to say goodbye. — What time's your plane? I'll take you to the airport. — No, there was Will, Will was driving her, he'd bring the car straight back. — You're sure you can manage without it for now? — Aila's usual considerateness made him suddenly remember she must have asked him the previous night if this would inconvenience him; she knew he was hard-pressed although he did not tell her much.

At the cottage, after a few days' absence, he arrived for an hour; at one in the morning Hannah woke instantly to hear the car stop in the lane and flew stumbling to the door. He was in a state of high tension from talk and exhaustion, and the touch of her sleep-hot skin made him start and shudder. His eye-sockets were purple as if from a blow. Don't talk, don't talk any more, Hannah said, although she was the one he talked to, she was the one with whom he shared what there was to live for outside self, she was the one friend he ever had. They quickly made love — no, he fucked her, it was all he had left in him to expend. And then he had to get dressed and go; to put in an appearance for his son, at breakfast, to prepare himself with some rest for the decisions of another day. If he could get to sleep; But then begins a journey in my head, to work my mind. The old consolation of fine words become a taunt. Why was he approached that night?

How could he ever have imagined anyone could construe something significant out of that unexpected and insulting visit?

But it actually was remarked to him: Why you?

Said lightly. He could not believe the obvious implication, unsaid: what is there about you that made you seem a possibility? There must have been something, why else…? The irreproachable comrade, the popular Sonny… not such clean hands, after all? Nobody — sometimes not even those who repeated these things, murmur to murmur — knew where they came from; whether from buried malice within themselves, churned up in the mud of uncertainty and suspicion fear of disaffection created, or whether discreetly dropped by the enemy — which was no longer definitively only the government, the police, the army, but also the disaffected; and maybe these last were allied?

Why him?

How was it possible those people should have had the presumption to come to him? What made them think they could? Now it was no longer a simple matter of showing them the door. The idea that he had ever opened it to them filled him with dismayed revulsion. The idea that his comrade prisoners of conscience could expect him to ask himself such a question prised at the wound in his side.

— There are some whose trust I'd have laid my life on, but who don't dismiss these things, raise no objections… can you credit it? — He had to find time to talk to Hannah, needed to talk to Hannah.

— The bastards. — Blood showed patchy in her cheeks, bright blue tears stood in her eyes, she was blowzy with anger.

He shook his head at the uselessness. — I'd have put my head on a block for them, they'd never. they're the best.—

— No, I mean those others — don't you see —they want to set you at each other's throats. They want you to discredit each other, make trouble among yourselves. You've got to put a stop to it.—

—'Not such clean hands, after all'—You must have it out. Sonny?—

— I suppose so. But to me. to have to admit that such things are possible among us—

She wondered whether her touch would humiliate him; whether he needed to close off all his resources to feel intact, unreachable by tenderness as well as assault. But she took his hand and felt the bones, one by one. — No-one who really matters can doubt your integrity for a moment. You know that.—

He had it out with the top leadership; they discussed how best it should be dealt with and chose a method that showed their unquestioned confidence in and value placed on him. For a time they kept him at their side in the most important of discussions and displayed him as privy to critical decisions, even if these had been made without him. He ignored his wound in fervent devotion to see unity restored, purpose made whole again.

I have a little girl of my own. 'Little' not because she's physically small — although she is, she's about the same build as my mother — but in the sense the adjective is often used. She's not important — I don't go in for great loves. She's a nice enough little thing, very fond of me and I'm quite fond of her. I sleep with her at her place, on the couch in the sitting-room when her parents are out, or sometimes in the room a friend of hers lends her.

Just like Dad. My sex life has no home.

It's a sweet and easy experience she takes very seriously. She's intelligent (don't worry, I wouldn't take up with an uneducated girl…) and we go to the movies and the progressive theatre I've been brought up to have a taste for, when we can afford to. Her salary as a computer operator would be adequate to support us in a small flat, although I'm still a student and earn only from part-time work, and she keeps suggesting this. Then we can sleep the whole night together, she says, innocently awed. But I can't leave my mother alone, and because rny mother counts on me to be there with him when she's away, I can't leave him.