Nadine Gordimer - A Sport of Nature

He wasn’t one of the beach people. Hillela had never before seen their host, with his deep T-shaped transverse and vertical clefts where the razor could not reach properly in the stubby chin, the red underlip with dark patches like tea-leaves he had forgotten to wipe away, and imprisoned behind thick glasses in that botched face, magnified grey eyes with ferny lashes. They changed at once when he saw her. For him there was no need of introduction. — You can stand like a flamingo on one leg. With your bright pink skirt.—

— Udi, what on earth are you talking about — this is Hillela, you don’t mind me bringing her along—

— I am de-lighted … also, you are very welcome to bring along anyone of your friends … any time. I am glad her shoes are mended. But I wish she would be wearing her lovely pink skirt. — He held in his diaphragm with an almost military courtesy as he showed them into his livingroom.

— I couldn’t. It’s Christa’s. Don’t you notice, she’s got it on?—

— So? Oh you’re right… she has … So … But two legs, that’s not the same thing, that’s a bird of a different feather … how could I be expected …—

There was fish cooked in green coconut milk, then the cook brought in a dessert called Zitronencréme he had been taught to make. Alsatian wine revived trade union anecdotes in Christa and set flowing one of those instant friendships of tipsy laughter. — Isn’t she wonderful, our Christa, with her funny oohs and aahs and her thick Boer accent? — Hillela, do you hear that! From zat Cherman! — Even the mock insults were pleasing and approving. — Well, I’ve just heard him speaking Swahili to the cook, and I don’t hear you saying anything but jambo, jambo after how long? You’ve been here a year?—

— And you? — The man’s attention raced flatteringly between the woman and the girl. — How long are you going to go on saying only jambo? —

— Oh well, Hillela’s right about me … but she doesn’t need any Swahili, she’s on her way to Canada.—

The atmosphere was not one in which kindly lies were necessary. — No, I’m not. Christa, you know I’m not. — The man smiled sadly at the charming head shaking curls in a disclaimer. — Good. You stay here. This’s a nice place. Hot, dull, poor, nice. Isn’t it, Christa. Let’s keep her here.—

— Then will you give her somewhere to stay? You’ve got this big flat… how many rooms … — Christa tucked her head back to her shoulder, a child looking up round a palace. — All this to yourself. She’s sleeping under a kitchen table. I’m telling you! And there are cockroaches — oooe, I hate those filthy things—

The other two laughed at her expression of horror, she laughed at herself; she who had survived interrogations and prison cells.

— That is your Room 101, Christa. Now we know. — But neither of the women caught the reference to Orwell.

Finishing the wine extended lunch. Hillela was not seen on Tamarisk that afternoon; they went off for a drive in his car, Christa still entertaining them, he solicitous and even momentarily authoritarian: —Fasten that strap across you, please. Now, this is how it opens — you try it once or twice, please — Hillela had not worn a seat-belt before. They were not compulsory back where she came from. — I feel like a kid in a pram.—

— All right. I’ll adopt you. — It was said dryly, inattentively; he was turning out of his parking space into the street. Bicycles shot zigzag past and he called after them in Swahili, black-robed women congealed together out of the way. His lips pursed thickly on that chin, the chin pressed on the shirt-collar; he had about him the stubborn weariness of one who lives as a spectator.

Udi Stück demanded nothing. Christa came home — she had a job as a part-time receptionist to an Indian doctor as well as her title as some kind of welfare officer at Congress headquarters — not sure whether or not to be pleased with herself. — I was only fooling, that day … But I bumped into Udi this morning, and you’ll never guess, he’s taken me seriously — he says he’ll give you a place to stay in the meantime. I was only fooling … I feel a bit bad … as if I pushed him to it, taking advantage because he’s so generous.—

Hillela used the schoolgirl phrase. — Is he keen on you?—

Christa’s burst of laughter that shook her like a cough: —Me? Oooe, I hope not! No-oo-o. That’s why I like him, poor old Udi, he’s not like the others who think once you’re on your own here, got nobody, no family … you can’t get away from them. That Dr Khan — I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep on that job. He’s always coming in and making some excuse to lean over to see what I’m doing. He presses his soft tummy against me. Oh it’s no fun being a woman. Sometimes. — She wriggled her shoulders in one of her exaggerated exhibitions of revulsion. — I can’t get over Udi taking me seriously … Oh I think he feels guilty, us with nothing, living all over the place, and he didn’t even have to leave Germany because of Hitler, he’s not a Jew. He’s got that lovely flat — didn’t you like the way the sittingroom has open brick-work at the top of the wall so’s the air comes in? And at night, there’s always a breeze from the bay, he’s so high up, it must be cool to sleep there. I only feel bad because of his wife — apparently his wife died last year and he sort of doesn’t want to have people around, he wants his privacy. But you must jump at it! You’ll have a room to yourself. Fish in coconut milk. That whatsis-zitron pudding — oh my god, I could eat that every day — She hugged the girl while they laughed.

— But don’t you want to take the room, then?—

— No, no-ooe, I’m okay here with the Manakas, I couldn’t leave Sophie and Njabulo. They’d be terribly hurt. — Christa, the real refugee, one who knew prison just as did the black refugee couple with whom she and her protégée were staying.

It would surely be a relief to the Manakas not to have their tiny kitchen doubling as a bedroom any longer, but Sophie kissed the girl she had given shelter and was gracious as any Olga with a private bathroom and a rose to offer. — A-ny time. Bring your blankets and come back to us a-ny time. We always find a place for you. We must help each other in these strange countries. It is terrible, terrible to be far from home. But we must stick together, fight together, and we are going back!—

So it was not for long that Hillela as a young girl slept on the beach or a kitchen floor and lived on over-ripe fruit and Sophie Manaka’s mealie-meal with cabbage. Trust her . That was the observation that went around on Tamarisk Beach. She was still seen there most afternoons, in the yellow swimsuit. She was part of the company that lay like a fisherman’s catch spread out on the sand, holding post-mortems on political strategies used back home, exchanging political rumours and sometimes roused, as a displacement of the self each had accustomed to living like this, by the arrival of a new member for their ranks, standing there urgently vertical to their horizontals, dazed, the tension of escape seeming to throb in the throat like the life pulsating in some sea creature taken from its element and peddled round the beach before them in the sun. Arnold of the Command or one of his designates usually accompanied such people; a bodyguard not against any physical dangers but to ensure that the relief of being ‘out’ and bringing firsthand news from home would not result in loose talk. A Beach Rat was sure to be grooming its whiskers in every group. It must be assumed that everything that was said on Tamarisk became what is known in the vocabulary of police files and interrogation rooms as intelligence, and would result back home in more arrests; more valuable people forced out to approach slowly, over the sand, to join the company.