Nadine Gordimer - A Sport of Nature

The old man put his hand to his nostrils as one dismayedly adjusts a tie before being photographed.

— More likely her famous friend would be nervous of getting no more contracts for murals in government buildings, after such a commission. — Joe made one of his corrections.

It was not a painter but a sculptor who came. The old black man had agreed to a portrait — Oh I have been photographed I don’t know how many times — as courteously as he accepted every other necessity of being in strange hands. Pauline and Joe’s open-plan house had no doors except those of the kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms; everyone went to and fro, some considerately lowering the volume of voice of activity, past the chosen sunlit corner where the old man sat, one polished shoe slightly extended, the other drawn slightly back so that knee and stout Zulu thigh were at an angle of painfully-maintained relaxation and confidence. The sculptor built up thick clay scales, mealy and dun; the old man’s own great head shone, cast in black flesh and polished with light, the broad shining nostrils wide in dignity, the cross-hatched texture of the big mouth held firm under majestic down-scrolls of moustache, the small fine ears etched against the heavy skull. He felt the presence of the schoolgirl watching; the eyelids came to life and drooped slightly over black eyes ringed with milky grey, as if they had looked at white people so long they had begun to reflect their pallor.

The two guests in the house — the permanent one and the temporary one — met face to face again. She was in her skimpy cotton pyjamas, running barefoot at dawn to the bathroom, he was coming from there, the big slow black man, knotted calves bare, feet pushed into unlaced shoes, wearing an old army surplus greatcoat over his nakedness. Against the indignity, for him, the child and the old man passed each other without a sign. It is not possible he could have lived long enough to have reason to remember; but she might have kept somewhere the impression of the grey lint in the khaki furze of the coat and the grey lint in the furze of the noble trophy, his head.

The trial went on so long it became part of the normal background to the life of adults, Pauline and Joe, while from month to month nothing is constant for adolescents, looking in the mirror to see the bridge of a nose rising (Carole’s), the two halves of a behind rounding (Hillela’s) and changing a gait, the very act of walking, into some kind of message for the world. In the newspapers were photographs of blacks burning their passes, raising fists and thumbs, staring elated defiance. Then there were the photographs that, like memory, hold a moment clear out of what goes by in such blaring, buffeting, earthquake anger and flooding fear that the senses lose it, like blood lost, in an after-shudder that empties all being. Close black dots of newsprint cohered into the shout as it left an open mouth and the death-kick of bullets that flung bodies into a last gesture at life.

Newspapers are horror happening to other people. Hillela was invited by her Aunt Olga to the special dinner connected with Passover (Olga liked to keep up these beautiful old Jewish traditions which the girl, named in honour of her Zionist great-grandfather, would certainly never be given any sense of in Pauline’s house); the talk round the unleavened bread and bitter herbs of deliverance was of Canada, America or England. Olga and Arthur thought of leaving the country. Pauline and Joe cancelled their annual family holiday so that they could donate a substantial sum to funds for victims: maintenance for the dependants of political prisoners and money for needs that could not be publicly earmarked, that they did not want to be told about by those who received it, or to mention in their frank information confided to their children on the question of priorities at such a time: Yet the children must realize — people were living ‘Underground’, which meant they were fugitive, spending a night or a week here or there, always in fear of arrest for themselves and bringing danger of arrest to those who hid them.

There was some sort of argument on the telephone between Pauline and Olga, also not fully explained, but as a result of which Hillela, alone, went on holiday after all — with Olga, Arthur and their sons. Joe annoyed Pauline by refusing to see the holiday in context. — Plettenberg Bay’s beautiful. You’ll have a wonderful time. The beaches are so long you feel you can walk round Africa. And you’ll go to the Tsitsikamma Forest—

Pauline, cutting sweet peppers for a stew and crunching slices as she worked, could not be silenced entirely. — Olga suddenly wakes up to the fact: she has ‘as much right over you’ as I have, I’ve no right to deprive you of a holiday. For reasons of my own. That was her phrase exactly: ‘for reasons of your own’. That’s all Sharpeville and sixty-nine dead meant to her. She is also Ruthie’s sister, etcetera. She has you to dinner a few times a year … but suddenly she’s Ruthie’s sister, she feels responsible — Pauline turned her anger into a grin and popped a wheel of pepper into the girl’s mouth.

Joe put a hand on Hillela’s head in absolution. — Really beautiful. Hillela ought to see it.—

The day Hillela returned from the holiday a woman was sitting with Pauline under the dangling swags of orange bignonia creeper that made private one end of the verandah. The old dog came up barking blindly behind his cataracts, then recognized Hillela’s smell under new clothes and swung about panting joyfully while Pauline jumped up and stopped her where she had approached, hugging her, admiring — Olga, eh? Everything she chooses to wear is always exquisite — her voice whipping around them distractedly, a lasso rising and falling.

— Shall I bring out some tea when I’ve dumped my things?—

— No, no. I won’t be long: As soon as I’m free … I’ll come and hear all about … — Behind her, Hillela saw crossed legs, the stylized secondary female characteristic of curved insteps in high-heeled shoes, the red hair of the woman who had come that time with the Burger girl, Rosa.

Everyone else was out; Carole must have had a friend sleeping over, there were short pyjamas that didn’t belong under the pillow on the second bed. The kitchen was empty; Bettie in her yard room. Beginning to move again along the familiar tracks of life in this house, Hillela went into the dining area of the living-room to see if there was any fruit in the big Swazi bowl kept there. The voices on the verandah just beneath the windows did not interest her much. Pauline’s less arresting than usual, evading rather than demanding attention: —The woman who works for me sleeps in; her friends come and go through the yard all the time … she has to have a private life of her own. There’s someone Joe’s given a job to — we’ve converted the second garage for him. So even if I had some sort of out-house … it’s just not possible … even if I got a promise from Bettie and that young chap not to say anything … how would I know that their friends … We’re right on the street, it’s not a big property. There’s nowhere anyone like that would be safe.—

— It wouldn’t be for long. Haven’t you somewhere in the house; anything.—

— If it were somebody I knew. I’d feel the obligation, never mind the consequences, I assure you. But what you tell me — it’s just a name. And you don’t know the person, either, I mean, through no fault of yours it might just be a plant … a trap.—

— These ‘strangers’ are more than friends. There are times when personal feelings don’t come into it. Now … well, people are expected to put their actions where their mouths have been.—

At supper Sasha was there but Carole had gone with a youth camp project to build a clinic for blacks in the Transkei.