Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

Hjalmar had been so eager for the outing, and Emmanuelle was more or less in attendance on Ras Asahe, who was directing a recording and filming of the event for both radio and one of the rare locally made television programmes. The girl wore a brief tunic made of some beautiful cloth from farther up Africa, and, all legs, clambered about among the throng with Asahe, looking back now and then to where her father and Bray sat with a radiance that came from a presentation of herself to them as a special creature, much at ease among these black male shoulders showing through gauzy nylon shirts, these yelling women with faces whitened for joy. In her own way she was so exotic that she was part of the spectacle, as in the Northern Hemisphere a cheetah on a gilt chain does not seem out of context at a fashion show. Bray remarked on the fact that Ras Asahe was making films as well, now, and Hjalmar said, almost with grudging pride on his daughter’s behalf— “Whatever he touches seems to go well.” He spoke in a close, low voice; this was the sort of remark he would not pass in the presence of his wife, Margot.

Shinza had gone straight back to the Bashi — had left the capital, anyway: “—I’ll see you at home, then,” presumably meaning Gala. Without him, it was almost as if nothing had happened. All these people before Mweta, old men in leopard skins with seed — bracelets rattling on their ankles as they mimed an old battle — stride in flat — footed leaps that made the young people giggle, church choirs with folded hands, marching cadets, pennants, bands, dancers, ululating women, babies sucking breasts or chewing roasted corn cobs, men parading under home — made Party banners — the white — hot sun, dust, smell of maize — beer, boiling pluck and high dried fish: the headiness of life. Bray felt it drench him with his own sweat. If he could have spoken to Mweta then (a gleaming, beaming face, refusing the respite of the palanquin, taking the full glory of sun and roaring crowd) he would have wanted to tell him, this is theirs always, it’s an affirmation of life. They would give it to another if, like a flag, you were hauled down tomorrow and another put up in your place. It’s not what should matter to you now. And he wondered if he would ever tell him anything again, anything that he believed himself. The other night was so easy; how was it possible that such things could be so easy. Suddenly, in the blotch of substituted images, dark and light, that came with the slight dizziness of heat and noise, there was Olivia, an image of a split second. It was easy with her, too. She did not ask; he did not broach. It made him uneasy, though, that she and Mweta should be linked at some level in his mind. Of course, there was an obvious link; the past. But a line between the stolid walk down the carpark to lobby for Shinza (“Semstu, my old friend”), and the presence of the girl — always on him, the impress of a touch that doesn’t wash off — could only be guilt — traced. And guilty of what? I have gone on living; I don’t desire Olivia: something over which one hasn’t any control; and the things I believe in were there in me before I knew Mweta and remain alive in me if he turns away from them.

He felt, with the friendly Hjalmar at his side and the amiable crowd around him, absolutely alone. He did not know how long it lasted; momentary, perhaps, but so intense it was timeless. Everything retreated from him; the crowd was deep water. A breeze dried the sweat in a stiff varnish on his neck.

They went to the Bayleys’ house for a drink afterwards. Roly was there, Margot Wentz, and a few others. “How’ve you survived?” Neil Bayley meant the tedium of Congress. Bayley was “worried about the Big Boss”; “But you should have been there,”—Hjalmar was comforted somewhere within himself by the contact with the crowd of simple people at the rally. “They love him, you know, they love him.” An expression of impatience passed over Margot’s face; it recurred like an involuntary nervous twitch, these days, when Hjalmar was talking. Bayley said Mweta was being “ridden hard” by Chekwe, his Minister of Justice, and others. They wanted Tola Tola out of Foreign Affairs, for one thing. “Well, I know Mweta wasn’t too happy with him at the beginning — you remember that question in the House about his globe — trotting”—Bray smiled— “but he’s done pretty well, in fact, I’d say — wouldn’t you?”

“Yes — but those very people who accused him of spending too much time up in jets — they’re the ones who’re too friendly with him now, for Chekwe’s liking. Chekwe says he’s got contacts with Shinza’s crowd.”

Hjalmar deferred the company to Bray. “Is there anything in that?”

“We’ve seen this week what Shinza’s support consists of.”

Roly Dando waved his pipe. “Bray for one.”

Neil said, “You found him impressive? — When I read what he says I think what a bright guy, he’s right, most of the time. But if he’s talking to me — I mean if he’s there in the flesh and I’m listening — he makes me bristle. I don’t like the chap.”

Vivien’s body had the collapsed — balloon look of a woman who has recently given birth. In its frame of neglected hair that lay stiff as if sculptured, a verdigris blonde — her beautiful face kept its eternal quality through the erosive noise of children and transient talk. “He’s a very attractive man. I’m surprised none of us has taken him for a lover.”

“You’ve never met him. Schoolgirl crush.” Her husband did not let the remark pass.

“I have. I met him at a reception the first year we were here.”

“—Once her passion is roused, she never forgets, my she — elephant

“And I talked to him three days ago. We met at Haffajee’s Garage.” Everyone laughed, but she remained composed.

“Delightful rendezvous—”

“We were buying petrol. He remembered me at once.”

“This positive neutralism is a very fine idea and all that, but we have to be a little practical, nnh?” Hjalmar said. “Wherever it’s attempted the Russians or the Chinese or the Cubans come in and you’re back in the cold war; it’s like driving a car, nnh — if you stay in neutral, you can’t move. … He wouldn’t be any more nonaligned than Mweta. And as the West is frightened of ideas like his, the East would be the ones to get him. It’s between two sets of vultures.”

“Ah well, that’s the art of it. Keeping the flesh on your bones. That’s what our bonny black boys’ve got to master.”

Bray said to Dando, “Do you think Mweta’s having a try?”

Dando chewed on his pipe with bottom teeth worn to the bone. “We’ve talked about it a hundred times. You know quite well what I think; what you want is to confirm what you think. Because you’ve woken up out of your bloody daydream at last … I don’t know what did it … now you don’t like what you see. I’m in the stronger position because I’ve never expected to see anything I’d like”—there was laughter; even Margot smiled— “Mweta’s not a man to take great risks, he’s not a radical in the smallest fibre of his body. To make great changes here you’ve got to take the most stupendous risks; he’s chosen to play for half — safety for the simple reason he isn’t capable of anything else and in his bones he’s the sense to know it. He’s chosen his set of vultures because he thinks he can gauge from experience the length of their beaks; all right — now he’s seeing how much flesh he can keep from them.”

He found himself speaking to Dando, to them all, looking at the faces, one to the other. “Why are we so sure one set of beaks is so much more dangerous than another? — Because of the prisons, the labour camps, the thousands of dead in the Soviet Union over the years; because the Great Leap Forward’s been overtaken by civil wars in China; because of Hungary, because of Czechoslovakia, Poland — yes, I know. But we’re people who know what’s wrong with the West, too, the slavery it practised with sanctimony so long, the contempt it showed to the people it exploited — and still shows, down south on this continent. The mirror — image of itself that it sets up in the privileged black suburbia that takes its place … The wars it perpetuates in the cause of the ‘free world’ … If positive neutralism is the ideal, but the third world boils down to Roly’s art of living between two sets of vultures, why can we be so sure it mightn’t conceivably be more worth while to see how much flesh one can save in an association with the East? Why? Because we ‘belong’ to the West? Express our views — hold them — by the permissiveness of the West? … tied to it by that permissiveness? Roly — myself — I don’t think he’ll say he’s ever believed anything else — would you agree we’ve always accepted what Sartre once wrote, that socialism is the movement of man in the process of re — creating himself? — Is that or is that not what we believe? — Whatever the paroxysms of experiment along the way — whether it’s Robespierre or Stalin or Mao Tse — tung or Castro — it’s the only way there is to go, in the sense that every other way is a way back. What do you want to see here? Another China? Another America? If we have to admit that the pattern is likely to be based on one or the other, which should we choose?”