Nadine Gordimer - A Sport of Nature

Pauline was frank with Hillela, always frank: one of the problems with Hillela was that she never seemed able to explain what made her do what she did? Having got away with dancing in a shop window in a bikini with a bit of fringe bobbing on her backside, one Friday she did not come home from school and had not appeared by eleven o’clock at night. Carole confided later that she herself had ‘got hell’ from her parents for not reporting earlier she had no idea where Hillela was. Pauline thought Hillela, as the elder of the two, must be allowed the self-respect of more freedom than Carole. The girls had heard it many times: I don’t want to behave towards you the way Olga and Ruthie and I were treated when we were young, I’d rather take risks with you than do what our parents did to Ruthie.

But now a kind of dread came into the house; Carole could not explain what it was: —As if we’d done something awful — to you, or more that you were telling something awful to us … I don’t know … — Pauline telephoned the von Herz girl’s home. Her parents had been to the police and hospitals, already assuming disaster. They were not surprised to hear that Mandy’s new best friend was also missing. — I have never liked this friendship. — The mother was frank, too.

— Anti-semitic cow. I could hear it. — A moment’s distraction flared in Pauline. But the convention of action set by the other family provided an acceptable channel for the dread. The feeling it was something about which nothing could be done was contained. Carole went along with Pauline and Joe to a police station. All the time Hillela’s particulars were being given to a young Afrikaner policeman Carole was watching a white girl, a girl Hillela’s age, with Hillela’s little face, and big breasts shaking as she cried, a girl with blood dried dark like sap from a cut next to a swollen eye, being pawed helplessly, to comfort her, by restless and wary friends in the motorbike set. The light in that place where neither Carole nor her cousin had ever been was so strong that the shadows at midnight were the shadows of day. Boot-falls and clangings echoed from somewhere; shouts in languages Carole and Hillela heard spoken by the black waiters and cleaners at school, Bettie, Alpheus, Alpheus’s mother, and did not understand. — The policeman asked all sorts of mad things. Did you take drugs. Did you go to discos in Hillbrow. Did you have any ‘previous convictions’—and all in the most terrible japie English, just repeating what he’s been taught to say, like a little kid who can’t even read yet.—

Two other policemen were swinging their legs where they sat on a table and a third flirted in Afrikaans, over the phone. How tall was Hillela Capran? What did she weigh? Any distinguishing marks? Pauline, her hair bristling with the static of anxiety, would not give Joe a chance to answer any questions, but had to turn to Carole for these bodily statistics that obsess adolescent girls, always weighing and measuring themselves. Pauline had brought an identifying photograph, yes; one of the three of them — her children and their cousin — with Carole and Sasha cut away.

Did Hillela ever realize that no door was locked in the house that night? The front and back doors, the sliding glass ones that led to the verandah where Pauline had refused what was asked of her by the woman with red hair — all were open, the way a window is left wide in the hope of enticing back a strayed cat.

In the morning the whole house was swept full of night air, the leaf-smell of dawn. Carole explained how she had tried to stay awake that night but must have slept: she opened her eyes and saw the second bed still neat and empty. Bettie was crying, the flanges of her black nose lined with rosy wet. While drinking coffee standing up in the kitchen, Pauline and Joe, with Carole listening, discussed whether or not to telephone Olga. — Oh my god — Olga … What suggestions could she have. She didn’t have enough understanding to take her after that Rhodesian business, so how could she have any idea at all of how to deal with this? — Yet Pauline came back from the duty call somehow relieved, though scornful. — I told you. D’you know what she said? First she didn’t know what to say … then she came up with the bright idea Hillela might have gone to Mozambique. — Joe seemed actually to be considering the supposition, so Pauline exposed it in all its uselessness. — She hasn’t had a word from her mother since she was old enough to read, we haven’t even an address any more, so the notion she would run away to Ruthie … really. Olga reads too many romantic novels from her ladies’ book club.—

— Olga’d like to go and look for Ruthie, herself, maybe … so it’s a perfectly reasonable idea for her to have.—

— Well, I happen to love Ruthie, too, but I’m capable of being a bit more intelligently objective than my sister Olga—

— She reproached you?—

— Not that … unless you read her silences. She didn’t dare. But what does it matter now. Doesn’t help us.—

— Carole. D’you think there’s any chance Hillela might have had a notion to go to Lourenço Marques? — Joe gestured lightness; it would not be such a serious matter if her cousin had. — D’you ever get the impression she longs for her mother, or at least for some idea of her? Or might go for the adventure of it? Take the von Herz girl along?—

Well, Hillela would know how Carole had to answer her father’s weighing-up of circumstantial evidence. It was only surprising when Hillela did ask her young cousin: —How?—

— I said you wouldn’t go to Len or to your mother. It wouldn’t be anything we would think of. So then they went on and on, whether you were unhappy, whether you didn’t love us — all that stuff, I nearly passed out with embarrassment.—

But Joe was accustomed to persisting logically towards the uncovering of motivation. — If she were to be unhappy, to whom would she go?—

Carole didn’t tell Hillela what she had said then: —Sasha. I think. If he were around.—

— Sasha? Really? Not you!—

— Why Sasha!—

They still suspected Carole of covering up for her cousin.

— She would. I don’t know … because he’s older … but he’s not here. So she couldn’t have.—

They did something Carole would never have thought they would do. Pauline telephoned Swaziland — to the school. Sasha was out on a cross-country run but he was allowed to telephone home when he returned half-an-hour later. Hillela? He had not heard from her. They did not write to each other — Pauline knew very well Hillela never wrote, even when she was away at Plett with Olga, she didn’t write.

Had she ever spoken to him of any friends she didn’t want the family to know about? — it was natural for young people, part of growing up, beginning to be independent of their parents, to have little secrets. But it would be necessary for him to betray a confidence in an emergency like this, to prevent possible harm coming to his cousin.

Pauline came from the telephone with the dread settled upon her again. — No idea where she could be. He got quite cross when I said, if she should phone him or turn up there … There’s an inter-school match today, he’ll be away playing soccer at Manzini.—

Pauline went to take her Saturday-morning coaching classes as usual. She did not know what else to do? She would not help Hillela by letting down black children who travelled all the way from Soweto in their eagerness for education. Carole stayed with Joe, at home, to be there for Hillela if she came.

In the afternoon there was the slam of a car door and footsteps running up the drive; all three in the livingroom stood up ceremoniously to receive Hillela restored to them — but Sasha, Sasha was in the doorway. Sasha walked into the familiar house empty of the presence of Hillela. An amazing rage broke over them. He smashed their sensible calm like a bottle flung against a wall, and his words were the jagged pieces held before the faces of his mother, his father, Carole. — What’ve you done?—